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Ill us. i. Above: Case 405, a struggling, fighting, cursing 
demon. Brlow: the same thirty minutes later. 

See p. 96. 



DEHONISM VERIFIED AND ANALYZED 



BY 

Rev. MUQH W. WHITE, D.D., 

Yencheng, Kiangsu, China. 
A Missionary of Twenty-eight Years Experience, 



Author of "Jesus the Missionary," "Reorganization 

the Hope of Foreign Missions/' and various 

Chinese works* 



ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 



Printed by the Presbyterian Mission Press, Shanghai, China. 



I 



For sale by : 
THE AUTHOR, 

THE MISSION BOOK CO., SHANGHAI, CHINA, 

THE PRESBYTERIAN COMMITTEE OF PUBLI- 
CATION, RICHMOND, VA., U.S.A. 



1922. 



"BF\5SF 



a 



!5"Y\-M 



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erred from 

AUG 3 1 f 2 $ 




SEP -5 1922 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



Foreword. 

Chapter page 

I. Demonism as a Fact. Competent testimony. 

A typical demon. Dr. Wood's case. Miss 
King's case of supposed tetanus. The " Skeleton 
Child. " A New Zealand prophetess. Extent 
of phenomena. New Testament experiences of 
to-day. Method of procedure. A pig demon. i 

II. Demonism vs. Insanity. Not to be identified 
with the known insanities. Proofs. Periodicity 
illustrated in a woman. The ex-wizard. The 
fifty year case healed. Insanities among the 
demonized. Santonin and a demon. Insanity 

in the broad sense. ... ... ... ... 12 

III. Demonism Defined. Dissociation. Miss 
Beauchamp. General symptoms of demonism. 
The dialects. The yawning woman. A witch 
outdone. A case of hysteric somnambulism. 
Hysteric symptoms. Ages and sexes. Another 
typical case. Views of authorities. A distinct 
species of dissociation. Proofs. Miss Water- 
man's ferry-woman. Fire demons. A deadly 
demon. The two natures in man. The 
mediums. ... ... ... ... ... ... 21 

IV. Demonism of Psychic Origin. Predisposition. 
Dr. Morgan's cases. Barker. Meyer's classifi- 
cation. Prince on psychic shock. Sidis. 
Psychic causation. Physical factors considered. 
A wife's demon takes her husband. Why 
female cases predominate. Heredity. Epilepsy. 
Sidis's Russian. The blind boy. Other eye 
troubles. Can hysteria cause organic affections ? 
Tuckey's view. The efficient cause. ... ... 39 



11 CONTENTS 

V. Based on Perversion of Religion. What is 

religion? Sublimation. Superstition, science, 
religion. Fear and worship of demons. 
Mexico. Polytheism. Etymology of the word 
"demon/ 1 Proofs from history. Japan. Mos- 
lem lands. Africa. Idolatrous causation 
manifested in the phenomena. A schoolboy. 
The power of an idol. The Yangchow witch. 53 

VI. Principles on Which the Mind can be 
demonized. Dubois. Psychanalysis. Prince. 
Sidis. Daughters-iu law. Conflict. Cases of 
insanity. Conflict of religions. Pre-Christ 
demonism. Chinese history on demonism. A 
manic-depressive case from conflict of religions. 
Suggestion. Explained. Manifested in 
demonism. ... ... ... ... ... ...* 64 

VII. Satanic Origin of Demonism. Science and 
spiritualities. Occult phenomena. A case of 
environmental origin. Cause and effect. Al- 
truism. Freedom and necessity. Lodge and 
Miinsterberg. First cause of evil. Are there 
good controls ? Western cases sometimes classi- 
fied with demonism. Why Christian lands 
freed from demonism. ... ... ... ... 80 

VIII. Satanic Dissociation. Proofs. Demonism 
in the robust. Hatred and fear of Jesus. A 
demon challenges Dr. Hudson. Dr. Goforth's 
case. An India demon. The Bibles in the bag. 
Cases of transference. A New Zealand trans- 
ference. Boerhaave outdone at Kiangyin. The 
swine. A dog case. Babies demonized. Con- 
clusions. ... ... ... ... ... ... 94 

IX. Demons and Spirits of the Dead. Bible 
teachings. Communication between spirituali- 
ties and men. A possible theory. Are there 
subsidiary demons ? A Korea case. How 
account for the transferences ? Control not 



CONTENTS 111 

synchronous. Two Shantung women. Hyslop 
and the Thompson case. Limitations on spirits 
of the dead. Can they communicate with the 
living? ... 112 

I X. Treatment of Demonism. Miracles and 
science. Talking to the demons. Death of 
the demons. Scientific methods. Christian 
healing. Remarkable cases. Healing perman- 
ent. A New Zealand multiple case healed. 
Psychotherapeutic methods. Idolatry must be 
given up. The power of faith. Non-Christian 
exorcisms and "zars." Difficulties. A twenty- 
nine year case. Efficacy of Jesus 1 method ... 124 

XL Treatment of Demonomanias. A broad 
proposition. Religion a psychic curative. Mrs. 
Smith's cases. Miss Mary Culler White's 
experience. A demonomania in America 
healed. 141 

XII. Prevention. Social Psycho-therapeutics. 
An appeal to humanity. Changing the environ- 
ment. Get rid of ghosts. Can we deny the 
existence of spiritualities? Samuel. The dead. 
Dangers of Spiritualism. Responsibility of 
governments. Malpractice in religion. True 
religion the efficient corrective ... 147 



FOREWORD 



Modern Christian civilization has been freed 
from medievalism with its demons and witchcraft. 
An unanticipated by-product of missionary work is 
the unique opportunity of applying modern methods 
to the study of conditions, such as prevailed in past 
history. 

This book was not premeditated. Compelled to 
come in contact with the demonized, the author 
found it a necessity to work out the principles under- 
lying the subject. If, thereby, something is done 
towards unraveling history, towards bringing the 
spirit world out of the region of the mystic, and into 
the range of comprehension, of definition, the result 
will be a distinct advance for scholarship, and Chris- 
tianity will be stronger than ever. And it is ap- 
palling to find that the larger part of the world yet 
welters in this misery, from which we have been 
delivered. The very enlightenment of civilization 
has hitherto barred the door to recognition, and 
investigation of the subject of demonism. 

Out of consideration for readers' difficulties with 
Chinese names, the cases are referred to by their 
numbers in the author's records. If called for, these 
records can be published later. 

Hugh W. Whits. 



CHAPTER L 



DEMONISM AS A FACT. 

When the Bible speaks of demon possession, shall 
we condone it as pardonable ignorance ? Shall we be- 
robe, and be-auriole the past as sacred ? Is science 
antagonizing Christianity when it studies demonomania, 
zoanthropia ? I hope to show that, while Scripture and 
science may view the subject from different angles, they 
are both concerned with what is a matter of fact. 

Incredulity on the subject is not surprising. Men 
hesitate to believe what they have not seen. In en- 
lightened Christian lands, demonism has been gotten rid 
of. When missionaries, who find themselves living in 
the dark ages, claim to have come in contact with de- 
monism, the first impulse is to doubt, not their veracity, 
but the accuracy of their observations. Snap judgment 
scouts the subject, or casts the cases into the waste-basket, 
as a batch of ordinary maladies not scientifically diag- 
nosed. It is true, indeed, that in some cases, a demon 
has been exorcised with santonin, or pulled out with the 
forceps— showing merely a mistaken diagnosis. The 
open-minded reader will, I trust, find herein abundant 
evidence that demonism is a fact. 

I. My records contain three hundred and four 
cases observed in my own field, sixty-four cases reported 
by other missionaries, a total of three hundred and sixty- 
eight , besides hundreds of cases incidentally referred to. 
These are, with a very few exceptions, genuine de- 
monism. A few cases have been collated from Western 
lands, but they are, as a rule, not demonism. 



2 DEMONISM 

The cases used to establish the fundamental prin- 
ciples of this book have, most of them, been observed 
in person by reliable and capable observers. Dr. L. S. 
Morgan, Dr. James B. Woods, Dr. L. Nelson Bell, Dr. 
Geo. B. Worth, and Prof. Allison are all accustomed to 
clinical work, or scientific analysis. Miss Florence M. 
MacNaughton is an experienced trained nurse. Rev. B. 
C. Patterson, D.D., Rev. W. F. Junkin, D.D., Rev. Lacy 
I. Moffett, Rev. James R. Graham, D.D., Rev. Canon 
Arthur F. Williams, Rev. H. J. Mason, Rev. W. H. 
Hudson, D.D., Rev. S. Glanville, Rev. Jonathan Goforth, 
D.D., are trained theologians. One case is by a reliable 
business man, Mr. John Berkin, C. E. The lady evange- 
lists who have reported cases, having Western education 
and close contact with the Chinese, know whereof they 
.speak. These ladies are : Miss Margaret King, Miss M. E. 
Waterman, Miss Florence Nickles, Mrs. Anna Sykes, Mrs. 
James Bryars, Miss Mary Johnston, Mrs. J. W. Paxton, 
Mrs. Arthur H. Smith, Miss Clara E. Stegar, Mrs. L. N. 
Bell, Mrs. J. R. Graham, Miss Mary Culler White, Mrs. 
H. J. Mason, Miss Janet Hay Houston. Miss Irvine, Miss 
S. J. Garland, Mrs. W. E. Comerford. Testimony from 
other reliable witnesses has been culled from their writings. 
Such witnesses are : Rev. J. I,. Nevius, D.D., Rev. J. W. 
Owen, Dr. and Mrs. J. Howard Taylor, Mrs. Johnathan 
Goforth, Miss A. Mildred Cable, and C. L. Butterfield. 

Of the cases reported in my own field, many have 
been personally observed and studied. Records have 
been made immediately, and conditions noted from time 
to time as the cases progressed. Chinese testimony has 
been used only as corroborative, or as bearing on details. 
Such testimony is not used unless sifted and, as a rule, 
substantiated by a number of trustworthy witnesses. 



DEMONISM AS A FACT 3 

Some may feel inclined to call for fuller scientific 
analysis, for clinical examinations, for family histories. 
Owing to the peculiarities of this malady, such methods 
are impracticable. I could get plenty of demons for the 
laboratory, but would put no confidence whatever in a 
demon which would thus, for pay, allow itself to be 
analyzed. 

The testimony brings out a class of cases with well- 
defined symptoms. It is a distinct malady, which I 
prefer to call Demonism, a term which renders the 
Greek accurately, and should be objectionable neither to 
science nor theology. 

The term Demo.iism — or demon possession, if you 
will — arises from the conviction that when one is so 
afflicted, a demon takes control of the organs, and the 
man acts as directed by the demon. It is evident 

THAT CASES WHICH WOUI<D NOT GIVE RISE TO SUCH A 
BELIEF CANNOT PROPERTY BE CLASSIFIED WITH DE- 

monism. Let us look at a few cases. 

My No. 2, I saw in person at the city Funing. She 
was a quiet, retiring, country woman, of about middle 
age. When not the demon, she was oppressed, anxious to 
stay in the mission, and be healed. But, in a flash, the 
dull features would draw up in abnormal agony, such 
as no unprejudiced observer could doubt, and in malice, 
the very demon of a face. The eye would be furtive as 
of a dog in mischief. She would now be talkative, 
aggressive, resourceful, malignant. Conversations took 
place, such as this : 

Demon: I did not want to come here. A great 
many people made me. Have I got to go out empty- 
handed (i.e., without incense or other compensation)? 

We : Yes, the Iyord tells you to go out. 



4 DEMONISM 

Demon : (Speaking of the patient as a third person) 
I am going to take her away. I will not stay here. It 
does not suit me in this Jesus place. If she stays here, 
I will not let her eat. 

We : Where is your home ? Do you live at San 
Tsao (the woman's home)? 

Demon : I live at the Chang Fu Mountain. (There 
is no mountain in all the Funing territory.) There are 
six or seven of us (demons) , and all in confinement 
except myself. If your Jesus can snatch me out, and 
throw me away, he has power. Have you any way to 
drive me out? 

We : Yes, Jesus can do it. 

Demon : Then you will take rriy life. 

The demon was as distinct from the woman as Tom 
Brown is from Bill Smith. There were alternations 
back and forth several times a day, at any time, and any 
where. If there were pathological symptoms, I could 
not elicit them, i.e., nothing except such as would occur 
with any one under severe nervous strain. 

I had several interviews from April 16th to 22nd, 
1915. Under our treatment she made marked improve- 
ment. Going away for a few days, I came back on the 
26th, and was amazed to see her with a smiling face — 
the first smile I had seen — doing needle-work, and ap- 
parently well. But her husband had been anxious when 
the demon would not let her eat — what scientists call 
aboulia. When, even after this, she had an attack of it, 
fearing starvation, he took her away. Authentic report 
says she finally got well. 

The case reported by Dr. Woods, No, 101, occurred 
in his hospital. The patient was a woman on whom he 
had operated a few hours before. When he was sum- 



DEMONISM AS A FACT 5 

Imoned, she rolled her eyes at him, saying : " I see you, 
I you do not see me. You have not burned incense nor 
| worshipped me." She was not unconscious, had no 
delirium nor epilepsy. Dr. Woods pressed the super- 
orbital nerve, but saw no proof of hysteria, as ordinarily 
manifested. She claimed that she was not a woman, 
refused to be covered up, and demanded incense. He 
covered her, and replied : ' No, we will not burn 
incense. We acknowedge Jesus Christ here as Lord, and 
worship no one else. If there is any spirit in you, he 
can drive it out.' At the name " Jesus/' she turned on 
him a curious look, quieted down, the abnormal look in 
the eye disappeared, and in five minutes she was normal. 
She was in the hospital ten days longer, and had no 
further trouble. 

One of Miss King's cases, a wheelbarrow man 
whom she had known for years, No. 108, was diagnosed 
by a first-class American physician as suffering from 
tetanus and practically hopeless. When he was sent 
home to die, the family got a witch. She climbed 
on the table, went through her incantations, made the 
patient promise to submit to the demon, and to burn so 
much incense every year on penalty of further trouble. 
Shortly afterwards, he pushed Miss King on his wheel- 
barrow. Now, while Miss King does not claim to be a 
scientist, she could hardly be mistaken as to what the 
doctor said, nor as to the fact that a man supposed to be 
dying of tetanus pushed her on his wheelbarrow. 

On May 22, 1920, while preaching, I noticed in the 
congregation a woman holding a child which looked 
desperately ill. I always remember it as " The Skeleton 
Child." The poor little thing was nothing but skin and 
bones. The hands looked like birds' claws. It was 



6 DEMON ISM 

crying convulsively. I took for granted that it h& 
some physical disease — demonisrn did not occur to me. 

But presently I noticed the fits of crying would come 
on when we started a hymn. When I examined her, 
there was no fever, and the pulse was strong. The face 
showed more malice than agony. When we urged her 
to say she believed in Jesus, she became angry and tried 
to strike her mother. The parents said that two days 
before, when normal, she had expressed faith in Jesus. 

I recognized it as demonisrn, and gave instruction 
accordingly. A few months later, a man walked in with 
a little child. I was amazed when he said it was the I 
same one. She had recovered immediately after we had I 
seen her.* ji 

Rev. Canon Arthur F. Williams, of New Zealand,, 
having observed the phenomena for twenty odd years.. 
gives data on six cases. One of them, my No. 149, is a j 
most striking case. This was a woman who had been I 
afflicted since childhood, and was supposed to be mentally [ 
lacking. At times she was seized by some unaccount- f 
able force, and driven into the forest. She was feared as ) 
a prophetess and " tohunga " or medium. At forty years I 
of age she was brought to the missionaries, in a pitiable 
condition f health shattered, ragged and poor. As soon 
as she was questioned, the face changed and she went 
off into a trance. The evil spirits were asked : (( Who 
are you?" The reply came in the Maori tongue: 
" Offspring of the Serpent." The missionaries proceeded 
to exorcise the spirits, commanding them in .the name 
of Jesus to come out. There proved to be eight or nine, 
and they came out one by one, giving their names. 
With each exorcism the patient would go into a kind of 

* See illustration No. 16. 



DEMONISM AS A FACT 7 

trance, and a voice spoke. The last was an English- 
speaking demon, though the woman herself could not 
speak English. It resisted, begged to be allowed to go 
into an afflicted child that was present, threatening to 
injure the patient's body if compelled to come out. At 
last it meekly said: "Yes, I will come out." The 
woman was thrown bodily off her seat into the middle 
of the room, where she was suspended in the air at an 
angle of forty-five degrees, for a period of at least half a 
minute, and then fell in complete collapse. 

This occurred in November 1919. Canon Williams 
himself saw it, and vouches for the accuracy of the facts. 
He saw the woman again in 1920, now entirely well in 
mind and body. 

Such cases occur in all parts of China, and some 
other lands. Many of my cases are from Kiangsu 
Province. Others are from Chekiang, Hupeh, Honan, 
Kweichow, Rt. Rev. Wm. Banister informs me that 
while he was officiating in Fuhkien Province many of the 
churches which sprang up there began with the healing 
of demon cases. Mrs, J. Howard Taylor* and Miss 
A. Mildred Cablef report cases from Shansi. Nevius'j 
reports forty-eight cases from numerous provinces of 
China and from Mongolia. He and others report it in 
Japan, Korea, India, Africa, and a case or two in 
Germany. It occurs in Moslem lands. My No. 152 is 
a case of epileptoid demonism from Mexico, reported by 
Miss Houston, a well-known missionary. 

In my own field about Yencheng, while we have 
actually come in contact with only three hundred and 

* See her " Pastor Hsi." 

f "The Fulfilment of a Dream." 

%** Demon Possession and Allied Themes." 



8 DEMON ISM 

four cases, we know the total would run up into thou- 
sands. But, to be on the safe side, estimate it at six hun- 
dred. As this section has hardly two million people, that 
would give one to every three thousand, three hundred 
and thirty-three, or one hundred and twenty thousnnd 
for the four hundred million inhabitants of China. 

It is evident, then, that demonisni is a real and well- 
defined condition. It must be classified by itself and 
studied. 

II. Demonism, as seen to-day, is the same as in the 
times of Christ. The terminology is so identical 
as to make one feel that he is walking the streets of 
Nazareth or Capernaum. It is a common expression 
that the demon " vexes" one. The demon talks, comes 
and goes, throws the patient down, tries to kill him. 

Let us parallel a case or two. Read the account of 
the Demoniac ot G^dara. Now consider my Nos. 316 
and 118. The former was a widely known demon case. 
He would have spells. Would go out and sleep in the 
graves. Would eat filth. Would chant and curse people. 
He would go to the market, throw off his clothes, and 
curse with all his might. Now he is well and hearty, 
thanks to the power of Christ. 

No. 118 was a young woman, either demonized 
or insane, or both. Mrs. J. W. Paxton took Mrs. A. 
H. Smith to see her. They found her padlocked, and 
with a heavy chain about her neck, crouching in filth, 
able neither to rise up, nor to lie down. As the patient 
would break dishes, she was fed from a metal wash- 
bowl. She ate like a dog, and licked the bowl. She 
would call for food all day long, and ate four times 
during this visit of a few hours. She had spells in 
which she raved and cursed. In one of them she tore 



DEMON ISM AS A FACT 9 

Mrs. Smith's hat to pieces, for which she apologized 
when the spell was passed. Now she is a quiet Chris- 
tian, living normally, going to church every Sunday. 

In December, 1919, I was at our chapel in the town 
Tung'kan. The Elder, Li I Cheng, reported that they 
had lately healed a case like the epileptic demonism of 
the Bible. It was a woman, No. 387, thirty-five years 
old. While I was there, she came in and confirmed his ! 
statements. She had no occasion whatever to falsify, 
and indeed the facts were so well-known — she lived in a 
shop on the main street — that there could be no question 
as to veracity. She told me that she had been troubled 
ever since the tenth month, sixteenth day, four years 
before that date. That she would have spells in which 
she would fall down with convulsions, unconscious. 
Elder Iyi said she foamed at the mouth. The spells, as 
she reported, would last a half hour or several hours. 
When not in the actual crisis, she would be unwell and 
could not eat. In the spring of 1919 she came to the 
church, her husband supporting her. While there she 
began to eat. The spells continued but, after she attended 
church several times, they ceased. I saw her afterwards 
in 1920, and 1921, entirely well. 

No. 407 can well be placed alongside the New Testa- 
ment records. A man was carried to the chapel on a 
boat in a dying condition. He could not eat, was un- 
conscious, pulse could not be found. There was no sign 
of life except a faint breathing. After the worship he 
could walk to the boat with assistance, a week later 
walked to church, a distance of several miles, and has 
been well ever since. 

III. Recognizing, then, that the demonism of to- 
day is the same as in the time of Christ, and that both 



IO DEMONISM 

are a matter of fact, we may proceed with analytical study 
of the subject. Here we find three forks to our road. 

(i) We may assume that the traditional interpre- } 
tation of the Bible is necessarily the correct one ; that the 
' ' evil spirits " spoken of must be personalities entirely ex- [ 
traneous to the individual, whether the dead or diabolical 
spirits, taking possession of his faculties, speaking and '[ 
acting through them in a cuckoo or parasite fashion ; that ! 
science can throw no light on the subject* and it is f 
merely a question of fact. 

(2) We may attempt by scientific methods to ex- 
plain the conditions manifested, on a subjective basis as 
merely pathological or psycho-pathological. 

(3) We may study the data, study the course of; 
scientific investigations, so far as they bear on the 
subject, and find out the truth. Are there spiritualities? 
Can they "possess" men? And if so, how? 

As to "(i)" loyalty to the Scriptures does not neces- 
sitate it any more than it would necessitate us to believe I 
that " de sun do move." Indeed the Bible in the Greek 
does not use the word "possession," but speaks of the; 
"demonized," or those "having evil spirits." Past 
ages, which knew nothing of natural law, attributed 
everything to direct agency by Spirits. As to " posses- 
sion," the Jews and others believed that the dead could 1 
come back to life and "possess" men ad libitum. 
Diseases of all kinds were attributed to them, and ghosts 
walked in all dark corners. The world has outgrown 
that. We cannot turn back the clock of time. Further- 
more, facts, seen in our cases of demonism, show that 
this view would lead us into absurdities. 

In China and Japan many of the spirits claim to be 
"The Great Fox Spirit" or "The Weasel Lady/ 



DKMONISM AS A FACT II 

Rev. Canon Williams of New Zealand states that on one 
occasion he went into a house to visit a woman. Her 
little boy was abed with fever. Even before the child 
saw him, he began to squeal like a pig and kept it up. 
He would root around under the beddiug, and under his 
father's coat. Williams took the child from the parents, 
and let him go. He ran about the floor on hands and 
knees like a pig. The missionary prayed. The child 
snapped at his hand like a pig, but the squealing had 
stopped. After a short prayer and exorcism in the name 
of Jesus, the little fellow jumped up, rushed with open 
arms, and clung around the missionary's neck. He 
seemed exhausted, and lay quite still for a while. Then 
he sat up, and all saw that he was well. Now, if the 
spirits which claim to be a dead relative must necessariW 
be such, then we must give equal credit to these cases, 
and animism becomes truth. 

Again there are many half-developed cases. We 
who know them, often recognize a headache or mysteri- 
ous pains as incipient demonism. Other cases are 
partially demonism and partially insanity. The first 
method does not account for these. This line of invest- 
igation is unscientific, and would be barren of results. 

As to the second method, to proceed on the assumption 
that there are no spirits, and that all can be explained as 
mere disease, would narrow our viewpoint just as much. 

I shall follow the third line of procedure. Science 
and religion cannot conflict, if they are true. Mistakes 
of scientists and of theologians slough off as the world 
grows. Study of demonism proves, independently of 
religious faith, that there is a Satan, thus confirming 
the Bible on a point which the world is forgetting. Also 
we learn the principle on which it would seem that Satan 
uses evil spirits in demoniziug people. These points 
will be studied further in Chapters VII, VIII, and IX. 



CHAPTER II 



DE MONISM vs. INSANITY 

Demonism is just insanity — so says the cursory 
Bible student. It is the unscientific name for cases of 
paranoia, epilepsy, manic-depressive, and dementia precox, 
insanities, such as we see in our asylums — so says the 
scientist who has not seen demonism at first hand. With 
such phrases, the world has damned the whole subject as 
unknown and unknowable. With the facts before us, 
we should be able, at least, to blast this rock from the 
path of progress. 

I. Demonism is not insanity in the legal and popular 
senses of the term.* No examiner who knew his 
business would pass a case of demonism as eligible. to a 
state institution for the insane, any more than he would 
pass such insanities as delirium tremens or the hystero- 
neurasthenic quasi-insanities. 

Demonism and paranoia are somewhat alike. Even 
Sidis identifies them.f This is more easily understood 
when we see his view of paranoia as a psycho-pathological 
decomposition of personality* I hope to show further on, 
that demonism also is decomposition of personality, but 
not the paranoiac form of it, for demonism can be healed. 
When I showed my notes on ten cases to several leading 
psychiatrists in the United States, they did not suggest 
paranoia. 

Nor can demonism be classified with dementia pre- 
cox. Demonism usually has no il history behind it,' ' and 



*For terms see li The Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychol- 
ogy," edited by Baldwin, 

f " Psychology of Suggestion," p, 282, 



DEMONISM VS. INSANITY 1 3 

shows none of the listlessness, the silliness, the vacuity, 
the stereotypy, that indicate mental deterioration. Pre- 
cox is progressive. The healing is never complete nor 
permanent. Demonism is clearly differentiated by the 
fact that it does not usually progress, and can be healed. 

Nor can the depressives account for demonism, 
whether as manic-depressive, as what used to be called 
melancholia, or in other forms. In demonism there is 
no flight of ideas, no exaltation. Senility does not enter 
into the case — boys and girls are demonized. The 
depression of the insanity is inert. There is retardation.. 
That of demonism is tense. Every nerve is aquiver. 
In the Shepherd and Enoch Pratt Hospital I was shown 
a case of hysteria with tense agony like demonism, but 
the depressives I saw there and at other institutions, all 
had the hopeless look, the " lustreless eye "* character- 
istic of manic-depressive. 

That demonism is not insanity will be seen from 
some general considerations. 

(1) Many of the most marked symptoms of insanity 
are conspicuous by their absence or infrequency. With 
the demonized the grasp of past and present is good. 
Memory is continuous, except for amnesia — a break in 
the continuity of memory — between the periods. In- 
somnia, distractability, the aphasias have not been 
observed to any extent in demonism. Of the insanities 
a large part are to be traced to heredity. Some estimate 
the proportion as high as ninety per cent. Demonism 
cannot usually be traced to heredity, There may be 
several cases in one family, and it passes from one to 
another of them, but it has a perverse disposition to 



* Diefendorf . 



14 DEMONISM 

choose those of no kin, e.g., husband and wife, and has 
an especial affinity for the daughters-in-law. 

(2) In the well-known forms of insanity, patients 
usually either die or dement. This term, in the patois 
of modern institutions, means to become hopelessly 
demented, regardless of the species of the insanity. 
It is considered that even in the more hopeful varieties, 
such as manic-depressive, forty per cent follow one or 
other of these two courses. Now, among the demonized, 
death may occur from resultant maladies or from inani- 
tion, as there are no stomach tubes among the Chinese. 
But the proportion of the demonized to die or dement 
because of the demonism is infinitesimal. I have yet 
found only two or three cases of the former, and none of 
the latter. To diagnose as insanity a hundred and twenty 
thousand or more cases, which do not result in death or 
in dementing, would be a bold assumption indeed. 

(3) Demonism usually comes on suddenly, and 
without previous history, except of environmental condi- ; 
tions. A series of cases to which I shall often refer are 
my Nos. 323, 324, 325. No. 323 was ill from the first 
month, lunar calendar, of the year corresponding to our ; 
1918, and died on the eleventh month, eleventh day of 
that year. Nos. 324 and 325 were her daughters-in- 
law — no blood kin — and were entirely normal. But on j 
the twenty-second day of that eleventh month, they were I 
both taken just as she had been. After terrible afflic- 
tions they were healed by Christianity. One of them I 
have often seen in the two years since, perfectly normal. 
The other one also is well. Many of my cases are like 
these, with no record of abnormalities before or since, yet 
able to give exact date and circumstances of being taken.* 

*See Illust. 8, 9, 10, 11. 



DEMONISM VS. INSANITY 1 5 

(4) The absolute irregularity and, in some cases, 
frequency of the periods, differentiate demonism from the 
insanities most resembling it. It may not recur for two 
or three years, or it may alternate ten or twenty times a 
day. The duration may be for several days, or for ten 
minutes. It may play back and forth like lightning on 
a summer sky, knowing nothing of periods, or of the rise 
and fall of the circular insanities. This peculiar form 
of periodicity is characteristic of demonism. In con- 
versation, Paul V. Anderson remarked that this fact 
alone would distinguish it from manic-depressive. 

On February 13, 1921, we began a Bible class at 
the village Tienhu, to meet every day for a week. On 
that day, Sunday, after the meeting, a woman, my No. 
435, came forward holding a baby. She looked normal 
and happy. I had not noticed her in the congregation. 
She said she had been demonized, but was healed, and she 
wanted us to pray for the baby. While we are praying, 
all of a sudden the woman herself breaks out shouting 
as the demon, saying, "Not vex little one, vex big 
one." The face is now vicious-looking, underlip sucked 
in, eyes lowering. She turns slowly round and round. 
I order the demon to leave her. The reply is, "I have 
nowhere to go." I order the demon to kneel to Jesus. 
The reply is, " I will not kneel." But, in a minute or two, 
I notice a weakening of the patient's aspect, and make her 
lie down. There is a slight eructation. I tell the people 
the demon is gone. Presently she goes out with a Chris- 
tian woman, normal. 

From Monday till Thursday morning, she is per- 
fectly normal. Talks freely about herself, about this 
baby, and another child which had died a month before. 
The parents believe they were both demonized. We 



l6 DEMONISM 

urge her to pray, but she says she is too stupid to 
learn to pray. On Thursday we attempt to heal the 
baby. We pray that both child and mother shall be 
entirely rid of demonism. At this word, the mother is 
again seized. Some of the Christians take her to another 
room. When I go there presently, I find her kneeling, 
the Christians around her, holding a hand and praying. 
She has thrown off all clothing except the thin under- 
garment, though it is cold weather. She is trembling 
violently. When I say that Jesus can drive out the 
demon, the latter replies: "I am bigger than Jesus — 
if you do not let me stay here, I will go and stay in 
some other home." Some one asks, " Who are you ?" 
The reply is, "I rule over heaven and earth." The 
spell soon passed off. On Friday she came to church 
normal, but during the service had a severe seizure. 
We healed her, and she remained normal until I left 
there three days later. Since that she is reported as 
being well. Now the periodic insanities would not have 
sudden spells on Sunday, Thursday, and Friday, with 
the patient absolutely normal between times. 

(5) A prominent feature, as has been observed 
by all who have studied the subject, is suggestion. In 
the cases just given, it is most evident. This shows it 
cannot be insanity. James K. Hall, of Westbrook, says 
he never knew a case of insanity, caused by suggestion. 
As for the influence of it among the insane, Peterson, 
Forel, and others tell us the insane are, of all people, the 
least liable to suggestion, because the attention cannot be 
fixed. 

(6) That demonism must be differentiated from 
the insanities is evident from the large proportion of the 
cases which can be healed, and that by purely psychic 





Illus. 2. Fifty years 

a demon. Case 78. 

See p. 17. 





Illus. 5. The bund woman and her neighbor. 



DEMONISM VS. INSANITY 1 7 

means. This excludes most of the insanities, especially 
those in organic terms, brain lesion, focal disturbances^ 
general paresis. Epilepsy and paranoia are generally 
considered incurable, though epileptoid and paranoiac 
forms have been cured. 

Now take my case No. 320, widely known as " The 
Wizard." He and his wife report that his trouble came 
on originally as an attack of what seemed to be idiocy* 
He was abed, quite ill for some time, talking idiot-like. 
Believing it to be a demon, he yielded to the control^ 
and the spell passed off. But he was compelled to 
practice wizardry, and occasionally would have spells like 
the first one. This continued for ten years. But he 
was healed by Christianity. Now his whole appearance 
has changed, and for four years he has been entirely 
normal.* 

My No. 78 is another striking case. A girl of 
sixteen became afflicted. She was married. The years 
went by. She became old and wrinkled. Still it con- 
tinued. Under the influence she became a widely-known 
witch. Her chantings would disturb the neighbors. At 
sixty-six years a Christian man went to see her. He 
prayed with her, and persuaded her to take off the nose- 
ring, worn as an amulet. She went to church. For 
several Sundays the demon was especially violent. Then 
she was healed, and later Rev. C. H. Smith baptized her, 
I have often seen her since, well and happy. Note the 
twinkle in her eye. Now, if a case of paranoia or 
J epilepsy of fifty years standing can be healed by going 
j to church, our institutions would better change thek 
j methods.f 

*Illus. No. 17. 
; tUlus. 2. 



1 8 DEMONISM 

II. In distinguishing between demonism and in- 
sanity, we must recognize the fact that there may be 
occasionally a case of insanity wrongly supposed to be 
demonism. Still more are we likely to meet border- 
land cases, hard to classify, or showing symptoms 
akin to both insanity and demonism. Such probably 
was No. i. 

This was a man whom I had known for some time. 
I baptized him at Funing, on December 9, 1914. When 
he went home, a relative scoffed at Christianity. He 
flared up — and was off. I came back on the sixteenth, 
and the Christians took me to see him. His appearance 
was that of a man in intense mental agony. He would 
lie down, sit up, stand — in no position could he get 
ease. His face was drawn up as in weeping, but I saw 
no tears. The mouth was frothing and dripping. He 
recognized me, for once he called my name, like one in 
agony, appealing for aid. The look in the eye was ab- 
normal. 

In the days following, all his thought was about 
religious matters. He talked about going to hell. Once 
he heard the incantations of a witch, and was in terror 
until informed that it was at a neighbor's house. 
Another time he was scared, because he lost count of 
when Sunday came. Once he thought he saw a woman, 
a demon. He followed her, and felt around for her. 

By praying and the building up of his faith the 
Christians healed this patient. I saw him often after- 
wards, well and happy. The only symptom that did not 
seem to clear up was a tendency to over-emotionalism. 

Now this case differs radically from demonism. He 
had a bright mind, but his constitution had been under- 
mined by opium. In his trouble there was a prominent 



DEMONISM VS. INSANITY 1 9 

religious element, but there was no sense of control by 
a demon. There were no alternating periods. The 
trouble came at a time of intense mental conflict, the 
time of change from the old to the new religion. When 
I reported his case to authorities in America, some con- 
sidered it hysteria, some manic-depressive ; Adolf Meyer 
considered it schizophrenia, but originating in hysteric 
conditions. Indeed, the Chinese did not consider it 
demonism, for they described it, not as demonism, but as 
a " disease of the idiocy class.' ' His affection is hard to 
define, not demonism, yet not a well-defined case of 
insanity. 

On October 14, 1920, we made a mistaken diagnosis 
at the * Kwai ' village, a small country place. A child 
was brought, lying in a flat basket in a wheelbarrow. 
Several months previously she had come in from the 
field, suddenly ill. She had then wrapped something 
around her head, complaining of headache, and crying 
out in language such as the demonized use. Later, the 
pains went to other parts of the body; she stopped 
speaking intelligently, but would occasionally give a 
sound unformulated. Then she lay down, and since had 
not been able to rise. In our examination, when the 
mother threatened to throw her in the river — by no 
means an idle threat — a flow of tears showed comprehen- 
sion. We exorcised and prayed, but the answer came 
through a dose of santonin. I hear she is well now. 

III. Again, a correct interpretation of demonism, 
while differentiating the species, will recognize it as a 
psychological abnormality or insanity in the broad sense. 
A man and a sheep may be classified together if we 
make the classification broad enough. We may recognize 
distant relationship with the demonomanias seen in our 



20 DEMONISM 

hospitals. Paranoia, epilepsy, precox, especially of the 
catatonic class, depressives, especially melancholia — 
many of the insanities have patients who imagine them- 
selves Jesus, God, the Devil. Religionism is a symptom 
of many maladies. 

The laws of mental science, so far as established, are 
a help to the understanding of demonism. Nothing is 
gained, either by denying that it is a demonomania, or 
by confusing it with the other insanities. Clear analysis 
is the basis of progress. 

As for Bible students, they will be interested to find 
that when the New Testament sometimes speaks of 
demonism as lunacy* and yet usually characterizes it 
as a distinct matter, this is not merely a loose of terms. 
Indeed, it anticipated science. Commentators and trans- 
lators who have tried to tone down the original Greek 
to suit their theories have not improved the data. 



*Mt. 17 : 15 ; or madness, Jno, 10: 20. 



CHAPTER III. 



DEMONISM DEFINED. 

The problem of demonism is now nearer solution 
than ever before. Science has at last found a key that 
will unlock it. But to do so, science and religion must 
co-operate. Neither can alone view the truth from all 
sides. The key to the problem is found in the principle 
now recognized by science under various terms, Dissocia- 
tion, Dual or Multiple Personality, Hysteria. 

I. What is dissociation ? Normally constituted, 
man is an organized whole. Bill Smith or Tom Jones 
is an intricate piece of machinery, in which physical and 
psychic factors co-operate, and all according to the 
principles of natural law. Now the term dissociation 
is used by some in a wider sense as signifying any 
nervous or mental irregularity in this organism. Iu this 
sense it would include the subject of insanity, already 
studied.* The more specific use of the term signifies 
the subdividing of the powers and functions of this 
organism, so that instead of being one organized whole, 
there appear, as it were, two or more personalities in 
the same human being, the body being now under the 
control of one, and now under the control of the other. 
In these subdivisions the laws that govern the organism 
still operate to such an extent that each may be able 
to think and act and speak, appearing to be itself 
an integrated whole, but neither one has all the 
faculties and characteristics of the whole, and each has 
its own distinguishing peculiarities. 

* Thus, e.g., Hart's " Psychology of Insanity." 



22 DEMONISM 

Let us take an illustration in the well-known case 
which Dr. Morton Prince studied under the name Miss 
Beauchamp.* This young lady, of high standing 
socially and intellectually, was subdivided into three 
distinct personalities, to which — or shall I say, to 
whom — were given the names: B I, or "The Saint/ 7 
B IV, or "The Realist/' and B III, or " Sally. " In 
addition there were B II and other partially formed 
personalities. The Saint was morbidly conscientious, 
meek, inconceivably patient, but suffered with neuras- 
thenia, insomnia, depression, fatigue. "The Realist, 
whom Sally~dubbed "The Idiot," was physically more 
robust. She was^the antithesis of morbid saintliness, as 
seen in B I, strong, resolute, self assertive, " sudden and 
quick in quarrel/' determined to have her own way. 
Sally was physically hearty. I,et Miss Beauchamp be 
suffering with abdomidal pains, head-ache, exhaustion, 
and change to Sally. Instantly these symptoms, or 
rather the consciousness of them, would disappear. 
Sally could walk miles without feeling fatigue, but 
afterwards Miss Beachamp would suffer from it. As to 
disposition, Sally was " a mischievous, delightful child, 
loving the out-door breezy life, free from all ideas of 
responsibility and care, and deprived of the education and 
acquisitions of the others/ ' Her anti-conventionality 
would shock the prudes. Each had memory for the past 
and clear perception for the present, so far as concerned 
the one personality. The Saint and The Realist were not 
conscious of Sally and learned of her only indirectly. 
Sally was conscious of both of them and spoke of them in 
the third person. She plagued and teased them, learned 



*"The Dissociation of a Personality," and "Journal of 
Abnormal Psychology, " Vol. XV, Nos. 2 and 3, 1920. 



DEMONISM DEFINED 2$ 

even to hypnotize them, and deliberately obstructed the 
efforts of the experimenter to restore the original. 
Sally did not know French, but they did. Alternations 
occurred many times a day, and often without detectable 
cause. One of the personalities would find herself, e.g., 
at the post-office with no knowledge of how she came 
there. The Saint one day found her mouth unaccount- 
ably bitter. She did not know that as Sally she had 
smoked a cigarette. After years of study Prince was 
able to get rid of Sally and reintegrate the other two in 
the original Miss Beauchamp. She is now, as he tells 
me, a wife and mother, well and happy. 

Dissociation in this sense is generally recognized as 
hysteria, for science has made wonderful strides in the 
study of that subject. It is only the Rip Van Winkles 
who now think of it as necessarily an organic disease, 
uterine or otherwise. Science recognizes not only 
that dissociation is hysteria, but that the essential 
element of hysteria is a dissociating, a limiting of the 
field of consciousness so that the faculties do not operate 
as a whole but in a sphere limited to greater or less 
extent. (Prince.) 

This dissociating is psycho-physiological, for the 
nerve system is the meeting place. It is a functional 
disorder, a retracting of what are known as the associa- 
tion fibres, so that the more complicated nerve systems 
of the brain do not function. The psychic limiting of 
the field of consciousness and the physical retracting of 
the association fibres are viewed as co-ordinate. Science 
now tends to obliterate, or at least ignore the distinction 
between the psychic and the physical. As for the 
historic symptoms of hysteria: hyperesthesia, anesthesia, 
exaggeration, visual irregularities, indefinable coughs 



24 DEMONISM 

and pains, they are now recognized as manifestations 
of this psycho-neurological condition. 

There is a movement to abandon the term hysteria 
or re-define its meaning. Sidis prefers to use the term 
"functional psychosis' ' as covering this and other con- 
ditions.* Solomon Meyer, in a paper read before the 
Chicago Neurological Society, April 26, 1917, urges the 
abolition of the term. Whatever term or terras come 
to be used, dissociation belongs in the category of what 
has heretofore been called hysteria. 

II. My position is that demonism, scientifically 
considered, is dissociation or hysteria in this sense. To 
recognize the demon as in reality a subdivision of the 
original man, as a second personality, at first blush 
seems antagonistic to the Scriptures. That this is a 
misconception will appear below, and we make no 
progress so long as the whole subject is involved in a 
nebulous mist of undefined conditions. 

In typical demonism there are two well-defined and | 
clearly distinguished personalities, freely and frequently 
alternating. Each has its own characteristics. Often 
the voices are distinguishable. In three of my cases, 
the demon spoke in the northern dialect whereas the 
normal language of the subjects was Southern Mandarin. 
Nevius notes the same. No. 149 is a New Zealand 
demon which spoke English though the patient herself 
spoke only Maori. 

The dissociating is often marked by abnormal 
yawning. One of my cases, No. 434, I designate as 
41 The Yawning Woman." I first saw her in a meeting 
being held at Tienhu by Rev. J. C. DeKorne and my- 



*" Multiple Personality," p. 353. 



DEMONISM DEFINED 25 

self. Knowing nothing about her, I marked her in the 
congregation as a demon case because she had these 
abnormal yawns. Being partially healed she was able 
to keep down most of the manifestations of the demon. 
This was on December 19, 1920. Since that she reports 
further terrible struggles, but on February 13, 1921, I 
noticed the yawns less, and on May 7th they had dis- 
appeared and she was well. In narrating changes of 
personality in the case of Mr. Hanna, Sidis and Good- 
hart mention the intense sleepiness. ("Multiple Per- 
sonality" pp. 170 to 187.) 

The passing of a spell is often marked by eructa- 
tions. The Chinese take this to be the departure of the 
demons. Hence one of their names for demonism, 
"breath disease." On December 31, 1918, at Funing, 
Elder Liu Kwei-rung and myself were called to see a 
woman. She had been violently affected, drawing a knife 
on somebody. I found her abed, covered head and ears. 
When questioned, though a native of the place, she 
spoke in a Shantung dialect. The face had a drawn 
expression, rather malicious. She could not eat. 
Would groan, off and on. The family promised to stop 
worshipping idols. We sang and prayed. She gave 
two or three eructations. Soon said she felt first-rate. 
As we left the house, a witch sitting at the door also 
took her departure. 

Sometimes the attacks come on and go off with 
unconsciousness — syncope — but more often not. There 
is amnesia, more or less complete, but memory is-clear 
and continuous for each of the personalities. The 
demon usually knows all about the patient, but the 
patient may not know about the demon clearly. There 
is usually no fault in the perceptive powers, and orienta- 



26 DEMONISM 

tion is affected only to the extent of a change of per- 
sonality. 

Automatism is clearly marked. My No. 99 shows, 
not demonism, but what P. Janet designates as somnam- 
bulism. An unusual experience makes a deep impres- 
sion, an idee fixe, and the experience is later automa- 
tically reproduced. No. 99, a young man, just baptized, 
goes with others to a heathen temple. To show his 
newly-acquired fearlessness, he seizes an idol and 
attempts to make it stand up. The idol breaks in the 
middle. The eyes, being loose in the sockets, roll 
around. The sun, lighting up some red paint, throws 
a glare over the face as of a flush. A bystander cries 
out, "L,ook, he is crying/ ' and runs away. No. 99 
goes home to tiffin. His meal is disturbed. Going out, 
he finds in an ancestral shrine nearby a demonized 
woman. He calls on the name of the I^ord Jesus and 
heals her. But the experiences of the day have been a 
terrific psychic wrench. He is immediately taken ill. 
The broken idoFs pains are reproduced in his own 
waist and he has a headache with tremor, etc. Happily, 
his faith in Jesus is well-grounded and he soon throws 
off the bonds of superstition. He has since risen to be 
a captain in the army.* 

There are symptoms which some scientists explain 
as hyperesthesia. In my case No. 29, Mr. Tai was 
called to visit a woman. Neither she nor her family 
knew he was coming. Yet when he was three "li" 
away, she said: "That old man is coming," and talked 
further about him. Some of the cases chant ditties and 
refrains not known to them in their normal condition. 
One of Miss MacNaughton's India cases, while the 

*Illust. 3. 




Illus. 3. Capt. Wang. Hysteric Somnam- 
bulism. Case^,99. See p. 26. 



DEMONISM DEFINED 27 

demon, composed a beautiful poem of several stanzas 
about the hospital and other matters. Some cases have 
abnormal strength. 

In this form of hysteria the standard tests often do 
not detect it, for the somatic symptoms are resultant 
and incidental. Thus in No. 101, Dr. Woods could not 
detect hysteria from the superorbital nerve. Yet the 
variety of the somatic symptoms confirms our analysis. 
I have observed : coughs and hiccoughs ; huskiness ; 
dumbness ; indigestion ; diarrhea ; constipation ; con- 
tractions ; paralysis ; pains of various kinds ; asthma ; 
nose-running; frothing at the mouth ; blindness; irrita- 
tion of the eyes ; swellings ; menstrual trouble ; tremor ; 
emaciation ; loss of color. 

From my records I notice that out of two hundred 
and ninety-four cases, ninety-nine were men and one 
hundred and ninety-five were women. As to ages, out 
of two hundred and ninety-seven, I found seventeen 
under the age of puberty : fifty which began about the 
age of puberty ; two hundred and eight in middle life, 
from the twenties up to fifty ; and twenty-two old people. 

As a typical case of demonism, let me relate my No. 
58. In a little village lives a Mrs. Ts'wei. She had 
been troubled with a fox demon for five or six years. 
She had given up her baby to the care of others. (In 
my case No. in and others, the subject under the demon 
personality has been known to destroy her own children.) 
When our people got hold of No. 58, October 26, 1917, 
she had been abed in an apparently hopeless condition 
for over a hundred days. Under Christian influence she 
markedly improved. 

I saw her first on November 22, 1917. She had 
then of her own accord walked in to our chapel at 



28 DEMONISM 

the town Tung-k'an, a distance of ten miles. She 
declared from the first of her intercourse with us a fixed 
determination to conquer the trouble, saying she would 
not burn incense to that fox idol if it killed her because 
she wanted to save her baby from such a fate. I found I 
her to be a woman of about thirty years of age. From 
the 22nd to the 25th in the preaching services and 
otherwise we observed her carefully. The spells would 
come on frequently, more especially during the singing 
and prayers. She would be sitting quietly. The face 
would begin to look surly and the lips to pout. The 
left-hand corner of the mouth would draw down. As 
she got more deeply under the influence, malignity and 
hatred would show in the countenance. The head 
would weave, if we may borrow language from the 
elephant. Sometimes there was weeping. She would 
begin to yawn and continue it a number of times, each 
orgasm more tense than the previous one, until with the 
final expiration she would give a scream, possibly the 
automatic reproduction of the fox bark. Once I heard 
it on an intake of breath. It is the only case in which 
I have heard this scream. The spell now on, she would 
chant in the voice and personality of the demon, saying, 
e.g., " There were a hundred and twenty-five of us 
(demons) when we came, but now there are only five. 
For three years we have eaten good food, but they will 
not burn incense to us any more. How many people 
have they anyway? (Seeing the crowds of Chris- 
tians coming in from the country.) I must take her 
away from this place. But where shall I take her? 
She has kinfolks at Funing, T'ien Tsi-ts'ang, and 
Tung-k'an, but they have chapels at all those places. 
Alas, for my life! Alas, for my life! M On the morning 



DEMONISM DEFINED 29 

I 

! of the 24th, the demon was saying: "Go on home. I 

will spare your physical life." The subject in her own 

j personality would reply : u No, I am not going home." 

The spells would pass off quietly. Between times I 

would see her doing needle-work or helping about the 

j kitchen. When I would talk to her casually, she 

would reply normally, but sometimes seemed to shun me. 

We tried to get her to pray to Jesus. She replied 

i to me: "He (she or it) will not let me say it." She 

I would start to repeat a prayer, but when she got to the 

name " Jesus,' ' she would balk. I learned later that on 

the 27th, after I had gotten away, under the repeated 

efforts of the Christians she did get it out, and then 

! kept on repeating it. Before I left, on the 25th, while 

Mr. Tai was preaching, the demon was much in evidence, 

the face twisting and twitching, with continued chanting, 

! and now and then yawns and screams. When I rose to 

conduct the baptisms and sacrament, she was quiet and 

looked normal. When we came to the final hymn and 

prayer, I anticipated trouble, but to my astonishment, 

there was not a sound, and the face had an entirely new 

aspect. She looked completely subdued. Instead of 

the hard lines and contractions of the lips, the face 

looked relaxed. The mouth would open and shut by 

the dropping of the chin as of one in extremis gasping 

for breath. 

During these interviews, the minds of the Chinese 

were confused by the question whether this trouble was 

due to phlegm — they have an idea that mental aberrations 

come from this source. Our ancestors had theories no 

less ridiculous. On December 22nd, the husband brought 

her to Yencheng for diagnosis. They came to the 

morning service, much to the amazement of the con- 



30 DEMONISM 

gregation, most of whom had never seen anything likeil I 
it. While I preached, the demon was in evidence asi 
usual. The medical man, J. W. Hewett, sat down byi 
her and by speaking softly tried to quiet her. Being 
now the demon, she turned on him viciously like a; 
snapping dog. At one time, when she became especially? 
vociferous, I went down from the pulpit, laid my hand on ; 
her shoulder, and in an authoritative voice, said : "Jesus, 
Christ commands you to come out of her. Are you not 
going to do so ? " The demon immediately quieted 
down, whimpering: "Alas, my life is done for. They, 
will not burn incense to me. That man c Kwai,' that 
man 'Kwai,' and this Mr. White! I am afraid of 
them. ,, ' Kwai ' was the neighbor who had first brought ! 
Christianity to bear on her. 

On Monday the 23rd, the husband and wife came to 
my study. They talked for fifteen minutes. She was! 
perfectly normal and had no trouble while there. 

On March 16th and 17th, 1918, at her own village 
she told me that she had no further trouble in her 
every-day home life, spells coming on only in church, 
I noticed twice on this occasion that when a spell came 
on, she could control it by her own volition. She now 
talked normally and smiled, the latter an especially good 
indication of progress. 

To obtain the judgment of the best science, I sent 
my notes on ten cases to a number of experts in the 
United States. 

Lewellys F. Barker wrote: "This is a valuable 
series of cases and they fall into groups with which we 
are now — thanks to modern psychiatric study — fairly 
familiar. Most of them are cases of dissociated per- 
sonality, that come in the definite hysteria group. A 



DEMONISM DEFINED 3 1 

f few of them are probably instances of the manic- 
i| depressive psychosis. It is possible that some of them 
belong to dementia precox, but this is less likely.' ' 

Morton Prince wrote : "They are plainly cases of 
hysteria. In principle they are well-known. More 
specifically, the phenomena are manifestations of sub- 
conscious ideas, known as sub-conscious personalities.' ' 

III. We must, however, differentiate demonism as 
a type of dissociation sui generis. 

(i). Dissociation as distinct from demonism is rare. 
P. Janet tells his Harvard audience the subject is so rare 
that they will hardly have to deal with it in their 
practice.* Dana in 1894 found in all literature sixteen 
cases. Prince in 1906 charted twenty cases. Others 
have been discovered since, but in no considerable 
numbers. In 1917 I visited three well-known institutions 
for nervous and mental cases, one of them, the Maryland 
Hospital for Insane, having over eight hundred cases. 
In neither of them did I find at that time a case of 
dissociation, though in the latter the superintendent, Dr. 
J. Percy Wade, had observed it previously. 

Now demonism occurs only under certain conditions, 
but given these conditions it is widely prevalent. To diag- 
nose it as dissociation or hysteria of the general type does 
not account for the one hundred and twenty thousand or 
more cases in China alone. It is essential to qualify our 
diagnosis. The clear demarcation of localities gives us 
one differential, that it is of environmental origin. 

(2). Certain uniform predominant traits 
differentiate demonism. In the insanities which occa- 
sionally show dissociation, the variety of the concepts 

*" Major Symptoms of Hysteria," by P. Janet. 



32 DEMONISM 



'•: 



personified is unlimited. They cover the whole range, 
of the human mind from a rooster to Almighty God 
Variety is also to be observed in the cases of hysteric! 
dissociation. Miss Beauchamp had her " Saint /iff 
" Realist," and " Sally.' ' Mollie Fancher, studied by A 
H. Dailey, had her "Sunbeam," "Idol," "Rosebud/ 
"Pearl," and "Ruby." Doris Fischer, studied b> 
Walter F. Prince and J. H. Hyslop, had her " Mar^J 
garet," mischievous, "Sleeping Margaret," benevolent. 
" Sick Doris " and " Real Doris." Alma Z., studied by 
Osgood Mason, had her "No. i ," intelligent, patient 
womanly, but with illness and pain. She had her " Twoey/ 
a bright, sprightly child, ungrammatical, Indian as tc 
character, shrewd, interested in the well-being of " No. i. 
Then she had a third personality, "The Boy," broa 
and serious, lacking in all the book knowledge of "No 
i ," but interested in politics and practical matters, and 
a good housekeeper. In some of the cases studied there 
liave been two clearly defined personalities but no one trait 
so predominant as to name them. Such are the Maryf 
Reynolds case (Weir Mitchell), Marcelline (J. and pi 
Janet), Felida X (Azam). 

Variable symptoms do not differentiate species, but 
uniform traits, appearing in a definite, well-defined class 
of cases would. The bumble-bee of China has a different; 
stripe from the American varieties : the pigeon has a 
different note : the bull-frog has a different croak. Yet 
the bee is still a bumble-bee, the pigeon is still a pigeon, 
the frog is still a frog, for there are uniform traits which 
differentiate the species, regardless of minor differences. 

Now demonism may vary in details, but it is 
differentiated from other forms of dissociation of per- 
sonality by the uniformity of certain traits, e.g., there 



DEMONISM DEFINED 33 

is always a sense of control and the control is always 
conceived of as a demon. In some of my cases, the 
demon represents the superstitious concept of the Fox or 
Weasel spirits. In No. 3, a young married woman was 
afflicted with what appeared to be the spirit of her 
father-in-law. No. 26 was supposed to be au enemy 
seeking vengeance. Various gods and spirits are re- 
presented, but there is always the demon idea — using 
i| demon in its original non-moral sense. Other uniform 
J traits are : demand for worship, antagonism to the name 
I Jesus, etc. 

(3). Demonism is differentiated by the morally 

EVIL QUALITY. 

Let us be clear. In other forms of dissociation, 
abnormal evil, malice, ferocity appear. But in many 
cases it does not. Take that case of Ansel Bourne, 
studied by Professor James. An itinerant preacher, 
sixty years old, in his usual health, living at the town 
of Greene, Rhode Island, he suddenly disappeared. 
Two months later he was found at Morristown, Penn., 
keeping a store in the name of A. J. Brown. He had 
appeared to the neighborhood as normal. When he came 
to himself, he did not remember the Brown episode until 
James brought it back by hypnotism. Here there was no 
moral element. (N.B. I use the termmoral only in its 
ethical sense. Dubois, P. Janet, and others use it in what 
the Standard Dictionary calls a looser sense, embracing 
intellectual and emotional elements.) Both as Bourne 
and as Brown this case was religious, morally good. 

Would anyone claim that Sally was morally evil ? 
Prince expressly disclaims it, and says that dissociation 
does not usually cleave along moral lines. * Compare the 



* " Dissociation of a Personality," by Morton Prince, p. 2). 



34 DEMONISM 

"B" personality of i" B/C "A."* and " Twoey." In= 
some cases, as Marcelline and Blanche W., both studied 
by Jules and Pierre Janet, not only is there no moral 
quality but the second is superior to the first as to" 
both health and temperament. Blanche W. in the second- 
personality passed examination as nurse though she^ 
could not do so before. Indeed, in some of these cases 1 
the operators have left patients in the second personality,^ 
recognizing that as normal. 

It is evident that in dissociation per se the disaggre 
gated self may be morally good, morally evil, or morally? 
neutral, as the case may be. But demonism would nofc 
be demonism if the morally evil trait were left out. It- 
is this trait which has in all ages led men to attribute MP 
to Satanic agency. 

In the data now available, the evil trait is either 
universal or so general as to be distinctive. Partially- 
developed cases, of course, do not show all the symptoms," 
but every fully developed case I have observed mani- 
fested the morally evil quality. Should a sporadic case 
occur without it, our proposition would not be disproved; 
Diphtheria sometimes kills, even though the diagnosis 
does not reveal it. 

The evil quality may manifest itself in various 
ways. Thus Miss Waterman, in giving a ferry-woman's 
case, No. 105, says: " When the spells come on her, 
there is a distinct change in her disposition and appear- 
ance. At other times she may be normal and pleasant. 
But at times she gets a dare-devil, defiant air, talks in a 

different voice, she iives a profligate life, and 

says she cannot help it, that the influence compels her to. 
Sometimes she goes away from home for several days, 

*" My Life as^a Dissociated Personality, " by B. C. A. 



DEMONISM DEFINED 35 

[1 

I and when she returns, says the demon was working in 

; her so that she could not but go." 

Another form of moral perversity shows out in a 
series of cases reported from Sutsien, Kiangsu, by Rev. 
B. C. Patterson, D.D. With these cases, wherever they 
go, fire breaks out, a phenomenon observed sometimes in 
the insanities. One of these, the Tusan Girl, No. 120, 
had not been in the mission chapel twenty-four hours 
before a neighbor's house caught fire. Dr. Patterson 
and his colleagues did not dare bring her into the central 
station, but the Roman Catholics took her in, guarding 
against danger by putting up an image of the Virgin 
Mary. In a nearby room a teacher's clothes caught fire, 
and presently the mat on which the girl slept was afire. 
The actual causation of these fires we must attribute to 
the abnormal ingenuity of the demonized and we are not 
surprised that the Catholics found a box of matches on 
her. But the psychic symptoms accord with what we 
know of demonism. 

The more common form for the evil quality to take 
is that of malice. My No. 323 died of the demonism, as 
mentioned in Chapter II. Five days later a daughter- 
in-law of that family, No. 325, woke up to find her two 
months old baby dead on the bed. Four days later this 
No. 325 and another daughter-in-law, No. 324, became 
afflicted with symptoms similar to those of the mother- 
in-law. The demon represented itself to be the " Weasel 
L,ady," the spirit which " contracts the sinews and skins 
the hide," i.e., in vengeance for the sufferings of the 
weasels. It said: "I have strangled two of them, a 
big one and a little one, and I have three more to get 
before I am through. " When I saw No. 325, her face 
between spells looked wan and distraught. When the 



36 DEMONISM 

spells came on, she would begin to yawn and then ther 
face would be drawn up in anguish. The family werej 
in misery, pursued by this nemesis until relieved by 5 
Christianity. This malice pervades most, if not all of 7 
the cases.* 

A. distinct stigma necessitates a sub-classification, inl 
the genus Dissociation of Personality. Let us take a 
supposititious case. In Central Asia arises a malady.. 
It is characterized by symptoms physical and symptoms] 
psychic, sometimes repeated but not uniform. It is 
noticed, however, that of those reported practically all } 
manifest an abnormal bravery. This characteristic 
appears in old and young, in male and female. The. 
malady spreads. It appears in many lands and always, 
exhibits this trait. Science would not hesitate to recog-, 
nize this as a distinct malady, differentiated by the^ 
quality bravery. So to differentiate demonism by thej 
morally evil quality is not religion but science. 

In the normal personality there are rudiments of a, 
cleavage along moral lines. Sidis has brought out the 
fact that the normally constituted mind has certain 
inhibitory, or as he calls them, guardian faculties. When 
stimuli are presented to the mind, these faculties must 
determine whether or not the psycho-neurological system 
shall respond to them. These inhibitory faculties, insofar 
as they have to do with moral qualities, correspond to 
what theologians call the " moral nature. 1 ' They define 
this moral nature as a quality of the mind.f These 
inhibitory faculties are constantly coming into contact 
with stimuli of a morally evil quality and conflict arises. 



* See illustrations 8, 9, 10. 

t Thus, e.g., Miller of Princeton in his " Metaphysics or the 
Science of Perception.' ' 



DEMONISM DEFINED $7 

i The consciousness conceives the combatants as two 
men, the "old man" and the "new man/' the "flesh" 
j and the "spirit." These two men are what Prince 
would call "systematized complexes,"* and dissociation 
I usually follows the lines already thus systematized in 
I the normal personality. 

In demonism this evil nature gets control of the 
j man. In his normal condition it works against his 
j better nature, obstructs his highest development, but it 
| is held down by the reason, the conscience. In this form 
I of dissociation, the servant gets control of the master; 
Mr. Hyde, the Mr. Hyde that lies unknown in every 
| man, takes control of Dr. Jekyll's body and becomes the 
demon. In other forms of dissociation the moral facul- 
ties may be affected incidentally, but the fundamental 
cleavage is not along moral lines. Sally would be a very 
mild demon indeed and Twoey a benevolent one. 

The question may be asked, Is not demonism the 
same thing as the trances of the mediums? Yes and No. 
Motor cars are all motor cars but some are Fords and 
some are Buicks and some are Hudsons. The banker 
uses one for his private business, the jitney runs for the 
public, and the trucks carry milk and coal. The princi- 
ples of dissociation run through multiple personality, 
spiritualism and demonism. Yet the distinctions given 
above clearly differentiate demonism from all other forms 
of dissociation. It is for us, as we go forward, to find 
out whether demonism is a Ford or a Buick or a Hudson, 
and what part it plays in human life. 

Having thus analyzed demonism as dissociation, 
morally evil, let us not jump to the conclusion that we 



* ■« The Unconscious," p. 283 fg. 



38 DKMONISM 

have accounted for it on a subjective basis. The crux 
of the problem is yet before us. Whence come these evil 
traits? Whence come the abnormal faculties of the 
demonized? Can the thought-content of these dissociated 
personalities, and the abnormal psychic attitudes be 
accounted for on a purely subjective basis? How comes 
it that the morally evil nature, ordinarily under control, 
now throws off the inhibitory faculties, the conscience, 
the will, and the servant becomes the master? Is there 
outside influence, and if so, by whom ? 



I 



CHAPTER IV 

DEMONISM OF PSYCHIC ORIGIN 

When we analyze demonism as hysteria tradition- 
alists may take a shudder as though we had cut under 
the Bible. Independent thinkers will grasp the idea. 
Granting it to be, in a sense, a disease, the origin is not 
to be traced to some germ or blood clot or lesion. This 
chapter is written to prove that demonism comes pre- 
eminently from psychic causes, i.e., from the mind. The 
question, What affects the mind, will be taken up later. 

i. There are, of course, often physical conditions 
which make one more liable to demonism. Dr. L. S. 
Morgan reports that the cases which come to his hospital 
usually show some physical ailment. 

One of his cases, No. 102, was unable even to sit up 
without assistance. She could not eat and was amazingly 
wasted. Aside from the " demon/ ' which was, to her 
mind, very definite, moving about from place to place, 
he found indefinite symptoms such as would occur with 
functional indigestion. Another of his cases, No. 103, 
had a bad mitral insufficiency. He treats his cases with 
drugs, as the symptoms may indicate, but says he 
depends more on influencing them through the Bible- 
women to get rid of the demon idea, to use the treat- 
ment, and above all, to believe in Jesus. No. 102, as he 
reports, laid hold on the power of God by prayer and 
was healed. She used the medicines for a while, and 
then dropped them. Later she was baptized and now 
for several years has been an active Christian. In heal- 
ing No. 103, digitalis played a prominent part, and when 
threatened with recurrences it still helped her. After 
recovery she had a fine baby. 



40 DEMONISM 

The dissociations seen in Western clinics usually 
occur with disease, though even this may be psycho- 
pathic. Barker says of hysteria : " Most patients have 
a distinct neuropathic or psychopathic predisposition. "* 
Prince found in Miss Beauchamp's case an inherited 
nervous instability which prepared the way for the dis- 
sociating when she received a severe nervous shock. 

2. Happily science now knows what hysteria is, a 
functional condition of the nervous system and this nerv- 
ous system, the meeting place between mind and matter, 
may be affected by either physical or psychic causes. 

For the causation of psychopathic conditions gener- 
ally, Adolf Meyer gives a five-fold classification. f 
He says the disorders may be : ( i ) Exogenic, caused 
by, e.g., alcoholism or sexuality. (2) Organogenic, 
arising from some disease of an organ other than the 
brain or nervous system, e.g., thyroidism. (3) Neuro- 
genic. Such conditions are seen where we can actually 
demonstrate some nervous disorder such as a brain lesion. 
(4) Psychogenic, arising from life experiences, shocks, 
etc. (5) Constitutional, the most lasting characteristics, 
whether derived from heredity or acquired. 

From this we see that his position, which we may say 
represents the general scientific opinion, is that with some 
nervous or mental diseases, a break-down, an insanity, 
may with one patient be caused by, e.g., drink, opium, 
or disease of the thyroid glands, whereas with another 
patient the identical disease may come from the shock of 
a mother's death or from an attitude of the patient's 
mind due to unfortunate relationships in the family. 



*" The Clinical Diagnosis of Internal Diseases," p. 587. 
t See chart given to fourth year class in psychiatry at Johns 
Hopkins Hospital, January 191 7. 



DEMONISM OF PSYCHIC ORIGIN 41 

For hysteria the trend of opinion is to stress the 
psychic rather than the physical causes. In his chart 
Meyer questions whether it is to be found under the first 
three headings, but does find it under the last two, in 
which the psychic element is prominent. 

Indeed, in cases where the physical factor would 
seem most clearly indicated, as where dissociation occurs 
after a railroad accident, Prince attributes it rather to 
the psychic than the physical shock.* In the well-known 
case of Mr. Hanna, the dissociation came from a fall, 
which we of the laity would consider a physical cause. 
Yet the scientists healed it largely by psychic means. f 

Physical conditions, where they occur, are now con- 
sidered excitatory rather than efficient. This is true 
even of the sex organs which formerly bore all the blame 
for hysteria. So, e.g., say Dubois % and Stoddart.§ 

Sidis in his latest work, "The Causation and Treat- 
ment of Psychopathic Diseases" [p.i.] says: " In all 
functional psychosis" — in which he includes hysteria || — 
u there must be a mental background ', and it is the mental 
background alone that produces the psychosis and deter- 
mines the character of the psychopathic state" (italics 
his.) 

We may, then, infer that with demonism, while 
physical factors may be present, the psychic must be the 
predominating etiological factor. 

3. We may go yet further aud say that demonism 
may be caused entirely by psychic causes. 



* •* The Dissociation of a Personality, " p. 459. 

fSee " Multiple Personality ," Sidis and Goodhart. 

J M The Psychic Treatment of Nervous Disorders, " p. 28, 

\ " Mind and its Disorders/' p. 401. 

II See " Multiple Personality, " p. 353. 



42 DEMONISM 

In conversation Prince called my attention to the 
fact that the mediums, whose stances are dissociation, 
are trained to this work. This form of hysteria is by 
some classified as artificial, thus distinguishing it from 
the hysteria occurring with diseased conditions. It is 
hypnotism. The Nancy School of psychiatrists proved 
to the satisfaction of the world that persons could be 
hypnotized who had no hysteria, congenital or otherwise. 

Indeed Babinski would not recognize as hysteria 
anything which could not be produced by suggestion. 

That psychic causes are entirely adequate to produce 
dissociation is evident from modern researches. 

Dubois gives an interesting incident.* A professor 
was demonstrating before his class. By chance a patient 
came in with a trifling ailment. Treatment was given 
him. The professor then asked, "How long is it since 
your arm was paralyzed ? M The patient, who was 
perfectly well, denied any such thing. The professor 
insisting, paralysis actually took place and continued 
until relieved by counter-suggestion. 

P. Janet reports a man blind for four years, a woman 
blind for two years, and another with frequent attacks of 
blindness for a few days at a time, and all of psychic 
origin. f A popular magazine reports a case of blindness 
diagnosed and relieved on psychic principles by Dr. Ames 
of New York. Among Charcot's cases, one, a man of 
forty, found that his wife had disappeared, taking their 
funds with her. He lost speech for eighteen months. 
Sidis brings out the psychic origin of asthma. Also 
with a patient, who for years had had his stomach 
washed and dosed by physicians, who had suffered with 

* "The Psychic Treatment of Nervous Disorders, " p. 115. 
t " Major Symptoms of Hysteria ," p. 187. 



DEMONISM OF PSYCHIC ORIGIN 43 

fainting attacks, indigestion and serious heart trouble, 
the disease was diagnosed by Sidis as originating in 
fear.* Epileptiform cases, neuralgias, etc., have been 
traced to psychic shock, f 

With such evidence before us, we have scientific 
basis for our position that demonism may be caused by 
the mind, whether the patient has or has not any 
physical disease. 

II. Now let us take up our data. We see China 
full of demonism, while Europe and America hardly 
know there is such a thing. There must be a cause, a 
cause uniform and adequate to account for conditions. 

To illustrate, Newtown and Middletown are twelve 
miles apart. Soil, climate, race are the same. In New- 
town occurs a case of typhoid. In Middletown none 
occurs, or a sporadic case. The man who would trace 
one case to a cold, one to a fall, and one to upturned 
earth would soon find himself classified with a rather 
malodorous species of the genus homo. A cold or a fall 
might predispose to typhoid but for the cause we must 
search the water, the food, the local conditions which 
have influenced all the cases. Let us see whether a 
physical cause can be found which would affect all these 
cases of demonism. 

The pre-dominance of female cases at once suggests 
the old idea of a uterine disorder as the cause. In a 
number of my cases, the demon was more marked with 
the menstrual periods. 

At Tung-k'an, November 1917, a young man, No. 
71, came before the session. He was a partially healed 



* M Causation and Treatment of Psychopathic Diseases ," p. 178. 
t See Breuer and Freud, " Studien iiber Hysteric " 



44 DEMQNISM 

demon case, though the wan face, dishevelled hair, and 
generally lackadaisical appearance emphasized the 
" partially.' ' His wife No. 72 was reported as a more 
serious case. She would be normal and all of a sudden 
would break out cursing and mocking at people. Once 
as the demon, she struck her neighbor, who was also a 
demon, No. 58, saying, "You are no good any longer. 
They will not burn incense to you now." 

As the demon she spoke Northern Mandarin, 
whereas her normal dialect was Southern Mandarin. In 
March 1918, when the husband came into the room, he 
was so hearty, tanned, jovial, that I could hardly believe 
he was the same person. But the wife, a nice looking 
young lady of twenty-four, could claim to be healed only 
two weeks and^there was still question about her. They 
reported that her menses were delayed and they had no 
child, though they had been married three years. It 
would look as if the intensity and the prolongation in 
her cases were due to physical causes. 

But on the other hand, with my No. 5, the healing 
of the demon by prayer and faith was immediately 
followed by conception. Her little boy, born soon after- 
wards, was witness to the fact that with her the physical 
symptoms were resultant rather than causal. 

With No. 3, a young wife had a demon which came 
on with the menses. A tremor would go over her. She 
would groan twice. Then the demon would be in 
control, talking and chanting. Any physician of the 
old-time regime would have diagnosed it as veritably 
hysteria — a disease of the uterus. But when she was 
healed the trouble immediately took her husband, a 
hearty young farmer, and now for fouror five years he 
lias been afflicted with it. 



DEMONISM OF PSYCHIC ORIGIN 45 

No. 364 was another noteworthy case of demonism 
in a male. On November 6, 1919, in our chapel at Ta- 
t'ao, I noticed a man, who had been brought on a 
barrow. He looked very ill. When they supported him 
into the room, he sat motionless for two hours. In the 
examination he reported that he had been ill for two 
months. He had not eaten, to speak of, for ten days. 
Did not urinate. Presently he began to breathe very 
hard. I told him to lie down. He did so, beginning 
to moan. After the meeting they took him away 
on a barrow. I saw him in December, 1920, robust, 
ruddy, strong. 

Demonism is just as serious with males as with 
females, but it occurs more often with the latter. This 
must be attributed, not to the physical, but to the 
psychic feminine. True, the psychic feminine is in- 
fluenced by physical conditions of her sex. Note 
the irritability of the pregnant woman. Indeed, we may 
say that fear of a mouse may be attributed to woman's 
sex, as so many women do fear a mouse." But a man 
may be irritable and may even fear a mouse. If we fall 
in line with the trend of opinion, and consider demonism 
as a psycho-physical condition of psychic origin, the 
pre-dominance of it among women is easily accounted 
for on the principle that the psychic characteristics of 
woman are such as to render her peculiarly liable to 
demonism. This hypothesis gives no embarrassment 
when a case occurs among males. 

In writing the above, as the most typical case of 
demonism arising probably from physical sex conditions, 
I selected No. 72. On May 22, 1920, some time after 
this was written, I went to her village, and what was 
my surprise to find No. 72 rejoicing in a baby ! The 



46 DEMONISM 

healing of the demonistn had healed also the sex trouble, 
thus showing that the latter was not the cause of the 
demonism but the result of it. 

2. Can heredity account for demonism ? Possibly 
in some cases it may predispose to it. Meyer recognizes 
it among the constitutional factors possible in hysteria.: 
But Sidis denies that psychopathic diseases are heredK 
tary.* In my cases, heredity has not been noticeably? 
prevalent. Even where it seemed most clearly indicated, '; 
there were usually decisive reasons for not recognizing it 
as the efficient cause. Where several cases occur in one; 
family, it usually passes between those of no blood kin,: 
as the husband and wife, and it especially prefers the; 
poor daughters-in-law. 

My No. 67, while a maiden, worshipped a large paper 3 
idol, and became afflicted with demonism. After marriage! 
it persisted. Whenever she omitted the burning of in-- 
cense, she would feel badly, would then not recognize her-! 
husband and would talk as the demon. After she had? 
been oppressed for twenty years, a neighbor became a 
Christian and took the preacher to see her. He found) 
this idol treasured up in the bedroom, showing thereby? 
unusual devotion, for the idols usually hang in the sitting^ 
room. She allowed him to take it down and was soon; 
healed. But she had a son eleven years old. After thei 
healing, one day an idol procession was passing. He joined; 
in and from that date the demon came on him. After a year j 
or more, he too was healed. Then his sister-in-law was- 
afflicted. In these cases the three all manifested the same 
symptoms, including, what is not so common, vomiting 
and purging. Now, was the son's case due to heredity? 



* " Causation and Treatment of Psychopathic Diseases," p. i 



DEMONISM OF PSYCHIC ORIGIN 47 

If so, how explain the evident connection with idolatry ? 
How explain the daughter-in-law's case? How explain 
the fact that neither of these cases occurred until the 
mother was healed ?* 

3. On the question of etiology, epilepsy needs 
especial elucidation. The appearance of epilepsy among 
the demonized and possibly of demonism among the 
epileptic, has in this hitherto unanalyzed subject led to 
hopeless confusion. 

What is epilepsy? Science is not prepared to 
commit itself. But the trend of opinion is to put 
epilepsy among the diseases expressed in organic terras. 
Spratling interprets it as organic and Dunton, of the 
Shepherd and Enoch Pratt Hospital, accepts his opinion 
on the ground that the marked increase of neuroglia 
fibres necessarily implies degeneration in the tissue of 
the brain, j The general opinion that epilepsy is incurable 
rests, of course, on the interpretation of it as organic. 

There are, however, diseases recognized as epilepti- 
form, to say the least, which are of psychic origin. 
Sidis gives an interesting case. J A Russian, twenty-one 
years of age, was affected with what appeared to be 
Jacksonian epilepsy. There would be rhythmic move- 
ments, convulsions, anesthesia. The head and the whole 
right side were affected. The attacks would come on 
annually, about the same time, and would always begin 
at midnight. On being examined under hypnosis, the 
trouble was traced to an experience in his sixteenth 
year. He was then in Russia and very superstitious. 
Going to a ball one night, as he passed the cemetery, be 

*Illus. 4. 

t " See Maryland Medical Journal ", Feb., 1905. 

J "Causation and Treatment of Psychopathic Diseases,' ' p. 254. 



48 DEMONISM 

thought he heard somebody after him* In fright he fell 
down aud had a "fit," being carried home unconscious. 
Under hypnosis he would live this experience over. 
Again he was in Russia, talking Russian, talking 
about his mama, frightened to death and having a 
fall. The psychopathic origin of this epilepsy was 
clearly demonstrated. 

Such epileptiform phenomena are especially frequent 
with hysteria.* 

Now true epilepsy may manifest dissociation. In 
Prince's chartf a number of the cases of dissociation 
were epileptics. But to my inquiry about them, Prince 
replied that the dissociation was one thing and the 
epilepsy was another. Demonism, being a species of 
dissociation, may be induced by epilepsy — though I 
have not yet found any such cases. On the other 
hand, as demonism is hysteria, it may manifest itself 
in epileptiform attacks. Such cases are beautifully 
paralleled by Sidis's Russian. 

Among my cases, a number manifested the demonism 
in this epileptiform way. No. 134, reported by Mrs. J. 
R. Graham, when in the spells turned a distinct purple 
color. No. 387 for over three years had been liable to 
spells in which she would fall down unconscious, having 
convulsions and foaming at the mouth. No. 440 was a 
young man. When the Christians were summoned, they 
found him abed, unconscious, mouth contracted and 
foaming. Yet we heal these cases by faith. No. 387 
got well by coming to church and has continued well for 
two years. No. 440, three months after our healing, is 
working in the fields and preparing to get married. 

*See Breuerfand Freud's " Studien iiber Hysteric." 
f " Journal of Abnormal Psychology," October, 1906. 



DEMONISM OF PSYCHIC ORIGIN 49 

Whether the demonism be super-induced on the 
epilepsy or the epilepsy be a by-product of the demonism, 
in any case epilepsy cannot account for demonism as the 
great majority of the cases are curable. 

(4) Of the numerous maladies seen with demonism, 
the eye cases attract attention. For the benefit of 
scientists I will give a few cases rather fully. 

No. 348 is a little boy. According to the statements 
of the father, mother and others on the fourth day of 
the second month, lunar calendar, 1919, in the morning 
the boy was well in every way, playing with other 
children. Before midday in the fields he suddenly fell 
down, speaking and acting as a demon and not able to 
see clearly. In half a month he was blind. On the 
sixth of the third month a native doctor, according to 
their ignorant practices, stuck needles in the inner 
corners of the eyes. On the thirteenth of that month 
the child was brought to the Christians. The demonism 
was healed by them, but the eye trouble persisted. 
When I first saw him, shortly after that, the eyes 
showed very slight symptoms of inflammation, the pupils 
were not clearly distinguishable in either eye and when 
I could slightly detect them, they showed a lead-bluish 
color. In May 1920, I saw the child. In the right eye 
the iris was now clearly defined and a good normal color. 
There was a white spot, clearly marked. It was not on 
the cornea but back in the lens. It was smaller than 
the pupil and instead of being circular, it had an irregular 
jagged outline. The left eye was blurred, bluish-white 
and the pupil not clearly distinguishable. No contractions 
could be gotten. The patient did not look so hopelessly 
despondent as before and to inquiry replied that things 
looked " variegated/' but he could not make out forms. 



50 DEMONISM 

The family gave up hope, would not accept Chris- 
tianity, would not let the boy be sent to Shanghai, and 
he was not cured. 

No. 38 was demonized about 1906 or '07, and 
blindness came on. She says there was never any "eye 
disease. " In 1912 the Christians healed the demonism. 
When I first saw her, in 1919, she was normal in every 
way except being blind. The pupils were inflated and 
of a dull, muddy color. Iris and pupil were clearly 
defined. The lids moved freely. In March, 1920, J. W. 
Hewett, m.r.c.s., i^.r.c.p., diagnosed the case as 
atrophy of the optic nerves, primary, i.e., coming on 
without inflammation. So far as he could judge after these 
years, he thought it may have been due to (1) mental 
strain, and (2) insufficient nourishment. The husband 
had taken a second wife and mistreated this one.* 

No. 349 is a woman thirty-seven years of age. In 
1918, sixth month (about July), one day in the fields she 
began to laugh abnormally. They sent for the landlord. 
From that time on she had spells of demonism, coming 
off and on, and lasting three or four days. She would 
have pain in the head and the right eye. There was no 
trouble in the other eye. The right eye would become 
blurred so that she could not see the road. It got red 
and inflamed. She herself, the husband, and the land- 
lord say the eye trouble came after the demonism. In 
the eighth month she was brought to the Christians and 
healed of the demonism. May 19, 1919, I saw her. She 
seemed entirely well, color good, flesh normal. The 
only symptom noticeable was that one eye would drip. 
The tears did not come in a flow, nor were the eyes 
inflamed. I would see a single tear form and drop, then 

* Illus. 5. 



DKMONISM OF PSYCHIC ORIGIN 5 1 

another and so on. I gave no drugs. In May, 1920, I 
saw her again, entirely well, even the eye. 

No. 79, after ten odd years of demonism, has the 
eyes inflamed. Now they have not healed entirely, 
although the demonism is healed, but are much better. 
No. 6 was a case of demonism with diarrhea, etc. When 
the demon came on usually at night, the patient's eyes 
became blurred. When the demonism was healed, the eyes 
also became normal. Miss Johnston's case, No. 122, was 
affected in the eye, when the demonism would come on. 

It is evident that eye troubles cannot account for 
demonism, as only a beggar's dozen of the demon cases 
show affections of the eye. That they may predispose 
to demonism is possible. It may be that in these cases 
there were incipient eye troubles not noticed by parents 
and friends. But these data raise the interesting scientific 
problem, whether the converse may be true and hysteria 
can cause organic eye trouble. 

C. Lloyd Tuckey in his " Treatment by Hypnotism 
and Suggestion" p. 20, quotes Dr. James Reynolds to 
show that in some cases of hysteria, when the stimulus 
of the will has been long withheld, the nutrition of the 
nerves is impaired and a functional becomes an organic 
malady. In the "Journal of Abnormal Psychology,' 9 
December 1919, Solomon Meyer takes issue with Tuckey 
on the ground that mere ideation cannot affect peripheral 
processes unless the emotional element comes into play. 

From the cases in the text it would seem that 
demonism can cause organic eye troubles, whether along 
the lines suggested by Reynolds or whether by the fear 
of demons acting as an emotive impulse. 

As to this whole question of etiology, we may con- 
clude that physical factors of varying kinds may be 



52 DEMONISM 

looked for. Take, e.g., No. 305. In the autumn of 
1918, friends brought this man to the Christian chapel. 
He had the appearance of one almost dead. Could not 
eat. Had violent spells of demonism. The Christians 
prayed with him. He began to eat and the demonism 
passed off. But after a time it was found that he did 
not urinate properly. In May 1919, he came to the 
hospital at Yencheng, was circumcised and treated for 
gonorrhea. He is now normal. 

In No. 101, the ether used by Dr. Woods may have 
predisposed to demonism, but Americans never become 
demonized from ether. 

Such factors cannot be the efficient cause of de- 
monism. If they were, New York would have as much 
demonism as Yencheng. Indeed the variety of the physical 
factors show they are merely excitatory. I^ocal con- 
ditions in China show nothing of a physiological nature 
that could account for demonism. True, the opium 
habit is more prevalent here. But of all the cases I 
have observed only No. 1 was known to have used 
opium, and most of the cases are known not to have 
used it. As for nerves, the Chinese are proverbially 
stolid. Certainly one would be more likely to find 
hysterical temperaments among high-strung Westerners 
than among the Chinese. Nor can sexualism account 
for demonism. If so, there are places in our Western 
cities where demons would be as thick as blackberries 
on a bush. Indeed, in China it is not in the notoriously 
salacious places, like Soochow Road, Shanghai, that 
demonism is found, but in the retired country villages, 
where unchastity is comparatively rare. 

We may as well give up the idea that pathological 
science can explain demonism. The problem is chiefly 
one of psychics. 



CHAPTER V 

DBMONISM BASED ON PERVERSION OF 
RELIGION. 

To work out this psychic problem we must take our 
point of departure from the one outstanding characteris- 
tic of the trouble. It is based on perversion of the 
religious in man, on superstition. Man has and has 
always had religious impulses — some do not recognize 
them as instinctive — which lead to religious beliefs and 
practices. When such impulses, beliefs, practices are 
manifested in crude and superstitious forms, they result, 
as we shall see below, in these psychic abnormalities. 

I. What is religion? Freud and others make it a 
matter of sublimation. They conceive of a current, a 
flow of biological, creative energy, which they call the 
libido. In lower forms of life it manifests itself in ele- 
mental impulses which make for life preservation and 
perpetuation of species. With evolutionary development 
the libido, as White says,* " is ever striving to free itself 
from its limitations, to go onward and upward, to create, 
and in order to do this it must overcome resistances, tear 
loose from drag-backs, emancipate itself from the inertia of 
lower callings. The energy which succeeds issublimated, 
refined, spiritualized." According to this view, as the 
libido, which would have fastened itself on lower ideals, 
sexual or otherwise, reaches out towards the higher, the 
ideals of majesty, power, fatherhood attract it, and the 
lower concepts are transposed, sublimated into the higher 
concept God. Jung, following out this thought, makes 
religion a biological product and necessary to biological 



* " Mechanism of Character Formation,' ' p. 42. 



54 DEMONISM 

development. It is not our place here to discuss on 
general grounds the question whether religion be objec- 
tive or subjective ; whether God made man, or man by 
subconscious processes evolved the god-idea. Religion 
is a fact, a biological fact, a historical fact. This fact 
is a safe starting-point for our investigations. The 
form of religion which underlies modern civilization is 
the monotheistic, and we shall assume monotheism as 
the consensus of human thought on the subject of 
religion. 

To make progress it is necessary that we first delimit 
superstition, science, religion. Superstition is a term 
constantly used, yet rarely defined. The dictionaries 
give various usages of the word, the sense being more 
or less dependent on the opinions of those using it. What 
may be, perhaps, the central meaning of the term pertains 
to the causation of phenomena in nature. In times past 
men peopled the air with spirits, free from the laws of 
cause and effect and superior thereto. When events 
occurred for which no cause was apparent, men guessed 
at causation by the interference of spirits. As a rebound 
from this, some would consider all belief in spiritualities 
as superstition. Others would apply the term to poly- 
theism as distinguished from monotheism. A safe 
definition may be stated thus : Superstition is the 

ERRONEOUS ATTRIBUTING OF PHENOMENA IN NATURE 
TO DIRECT ARBITRARY VOLITION BV SPIRITS, TO THE 
DENIAL OR EXCLUSION OF SCIENTIFIC PRINCIPLES. 

Science — using this term in the ordinary sense — 
has made no generally accepted dictum as to the existence 
or otherwise of spiritualities. It has formulated no com- 
prehensive theory of the cosmos, its origin, its govern- 
ment, its limitations. Science concerns itself only with 



DEMON ISM BASED ON PERVERSION OF RELIGION 55 

matters which are considered susceptible of proof by 
demonstration, with the principles of natural law. 

Religion, what we may call normal religion, scientific 
religion, is at one with science in fully recognizing natural 
law, but it goes further and postulates a Supreme 
Intelligence, the source of all that is good, of all that 
makes for the highest development, physically, mentally, 
spiritually, of the universe, man included. God, as 
thus viewed, does not arbitrarily interfere with nature's 
laws. He has the power and the right, if occasion 
arises, to alter, to amend, to suspend, to destroy his 
creation, even as the master-mechanician still remains 
master of the clock, the engine, the gun he has made. 
But ordinarily the volition of the Divine operates through 
natural law. It embraces the disposing of forces, the 
working through agencies and means, the manipulating 
of this vast machine in such way as to give effective and 
continuous control of every part. 

According to the monotheistic conception, whatever 
tends to resist the sovereignty of God, to violate nature's 
laws, either is morally evil or originates in the morally 
evil. Such evil is usually traced to a source, to the 
Spirit of Rebellion against the Divine embodied in the 
concept Satan. Thus light, knowledge, truth, health, 
the normal, what ought to be, are attributed to God. 
Ignorance, superstition, vice, falsehood, physiological and 
psychological deterioration are attributed, directly or 
indirectly, to Satan. 

This epitome represents what may be considered the 
consensus of leading monotheistic thinkers and is in 
accordance with the teachings of the Old and New 
Testament.* 



*Ex. 15:26; 23:25; Deut, 28:60; Ps. 103:3; Luke 10:17 ; 2 Cor, 
12:7. 



56 DEMONISM 

The application is, of course, on broad lines. No 
one would say that monotheists are free from ignorance 
and disease nor that polytheists or unbelievers have not 
health and knowledge. In a field of wheat on good 
soil, tended carefully and scientifically, nature* s laws, 
i.e., God's laws, apply more fully. Some of the wheat 
may, indeed, suffer in one way or another, but that does 
not alter the fact that it is a superior field of wheat. 
Another field,, where soil is defective, culture neglected, 
may have some good wheat, but in the main it grows 
rank with weeds. In countries where enlightened forms 
of Christianity prevail, where scientific principles are 
better understood and more fully applied, where men 
live on a moral and cultured plane, man is generally 
superior, morally, intellectually and physically, than in 
other lands. As the Divine law is put into force more 
fully, there is cleansing from physical diseases originating 
in ignorance and sin. Our hospitals in the Orient abun- 
dantly witness to this fact. Also we are now discovering 
that psychic maladies are relieved by applying the 
principles of science and enlightened religion. It is in 
this sense that I call the highest form of monotheism, 
Christianity, normal religion. It makes for normal, right 
conditions. 

II. Now the striking fact about demonism is that 
it does not occur, to any noticeable extent, where this 
normal religion, Christianity, prevails. Belief in God 
does not cause demonism. Nor is it caused by belief in 
the existence of non-corporeal entities other than God, 
good or bad. But wherever men worship or fear such 
spiritualities and demons, there we have demonism. 

It occurs where monotheism has not outgrown this 
superstitious fear of demons. Miss Janet Hay Houston 



DEMONISM BASED ON PERVERSION OF RELIGION 57 

writes from Mexico that in one of her meetings a woman 
rather deficient intellectually was seized with what 
appeared to be epilepsy. It occurred several times after- 
wards. Miss Houston noticed that it always occurred at 
the most vital part of the discourse. She recognized it 
as demonism and by the exercise of faith it was stopped. 

Demonism is the natural, the logical outcome of 
polytheism, whether the spirits worshipped be Christian 
saints or * 'heathen* * demons. Demon worship is un- 
scientific, abnormal. It antagonizes the sovereignty of 
the Divine and the rule of divine law, which is natural 
law. It is what I call mis-religion. It leads to perverted 
concepts, to a crouching, cringing spirit of readiness to 
worship anything from the God of Heaven to the gods 
of grasshoppers and of the kitchen range. 

The vicious tendency of polytheism is not determined 
by the moral quality of the concept worshipped, nor even 
by its existence. The term " demon* ' in its primary 
significance, the classic Greek "dainion** and the Chi- 
nese " kwei," had no moral significance. A demon in this 
sense might be a mythological concept, a departed hero, 
a saint, just as well as a diabolical demon. Thus when 
Paul and John spoke of the worship of demons,* they 
were referring to the Corinthian and other gods, many of 
whom represented departed human beings, whom they 
considered saints. He also called the Athenians " demon- 
apprehensive *' (Acts 17: 22). They seemed to accept 
his appellation and wanted to know whether Jesus was 
another "demon" for them to worship. The fundamental 
idea of the term ' 'demon* ' was non-corporeality. It shows 
out in Ignatius' version of Jesus* remark after his resur- 



* 1 Cor. 10 : 20^; Rev. 9: 20. 



58 DEMONISM 

rectioti : u Iam not*a*demon without a body," ouk eimi f 
daimonion asomaton. (Cf. I,uke 24: 39). 

The morally evil* element in polytheism is in the 
rebellion against nature and nature's ruler. This throws 
it in line with the Satan principle — evil, antagonism to 
law, antagonism to the good, antagonism to God, as 
monotheistically conceived. The demonism resulting | 
from this fdemon-worship was characteristically evil. 
Thus the secondary sense of the term, which the New \ 
Testament Greek differentiated by the form "daimon" 
or by adding an adjective to " daimonion," soon fixed » 
itself on language and superseded the primary. 

III. Now for thefproof of what we have been laying 
down. That demonism originates in superstition we shall 
see: (1) From the "history of demonism in the past. 
(2) From the conditions in which it now prevails. (3) 
From the facts manifested in the cases we have observed. 

(1) Before the Christian era polytheists worshipped, 
and monotheists feared demons, and Josephus tells us that ' 
demonism prevailedfat least as far back as Solomon's times. 
The Christ had to contend with it. Under the primitive 
forms of Christianity it continued. Indeed epidemics have 
occurred in comparatively modern times, but only where 
the fear of demons prevailed. One such was at Morzinnes, 
Upper Savoy, in 1857.* The demonism seen there was 
similar to what we are discussing, but was sporadic and 
the hysterical convulsion was a more marked feature. 

Whether or not the witchcraft of the past was 
demonism we have not clear data. Much, e.g., of the 
Salem witchcraft^was deviltry by human demons, as one 
sees by reading CottonjMather's "Wonders of the Invisible 

*See "Dictionary^ Psychological Medicine" under "De- 
monomania" 



DEMONISM BASED ON PERVERSION OF RELIGION 59 

World.' ' But New England was settled in the times of 
James I, whose book " Daemonologie" gave royal support 
j to current absurdities. The environment was certainly 
such as we see does produce demonism. 

Among the negroes of America there may occur 
demonism, though much of their conjuring was mere 
fraud.* 

(2) In modern times, under enlightened Christian 
conditions, demonism is certainly not prevalent, and proof 
has yet to be brought of its existence. The case of 
Gottleibin Dittus in Germanyf is no exception, for in all 
probability there was local fear of demons. Several 
cases of supposed demonism in America have been 
reported to me, but on inquiry they seemed to resemble 
the insanities. 

The demonism of to-day is found to be co-extensive 
with practically all lands except those under enlightened 
forms of Christianity. It is reported from all parts of 
China, from India, Africa, Japan, Korea, Moslem lands, 
the South Sea Islands. 

As to Japan, Chamberlain in his " Things Japanese" 
gives a quotation from Dr. Baelz as follows : <f Possession 
by foxes is a form of nervous disorder or delusion! not 
uncommonly observed in Japan. Having entered a 
human being .... the fox lives a life of his own apart 
from the proper self of the person who is harboring 
him. The person possessed hears and understands 
everything the fox inside says or thinks, § and the two 
often engage in a loud and angry dispute, the fox 



*See J. W. Babcock in " The Journal of Insanity/' April 1895, 

t See Nevius and others. 

t This term is used too loosely. — H. W. W. 

SThis is often prevented by amnesia.— H. W. W. 



60 DEMONISM 

speaking in a voice altogether different from that which 
is natural to the individual. . . . Among the predisposing 
conditions may be mentioned a weak intellect, a super- 
stitious turn of mind, and such debilitating diseases as, 
e.g., typhoid fever. Possession never occurs except in 
such subjects as have heard of it already and believe in 
the reality of its existence.' ' 

In " The Moslem World, " July 1913, Miss Anna Y. 
Thompson and Miss Elisabet Franke report demonism in 
Moslem lauds. While Mohammedanism recognizes only 
the worship of Allah, yet the demons are feared. Indeed 
in the " zars," the exorcisms, there is burning of candles 
and sweets to please the spirits, and there is sacrifice 
of sheep and fowls. These are essentially forms of 
worship. 

In the Journal of the North China Branch of the 
Royal Asiatic Society (1918), Dr. Zwemer brings out the 
Moslem's fear of demons. On waking he blows his nose 
three times because demons inhabit the nostrils in sleep. 
Constant washings are required to get rid of demons, care 
being taken lest they hide between the fingers. Yawning 
and sneezing are attributed to demonic origin, and prayer 
or ejaculation is necessary to remove such influences. 

As to Africa, Dr. J. L,. Wilson says* : " Demoniacal j 
possessions are common and the feats performed by those 
supposed to be under such influences are certainly not 
unlike those described in the New Testament. Frantic 
gestures, convulsions, foaming at the mouth, feats of 
supernatural strength, furious ravings, bodily lacerations, 
gnashing of teeth and other things of similar character, 
mav be witnessed in most of the cases/ ' 



*" Western Africa," p. 217, as quoted in the Encyclopedia 
Britanniea, Ninth Edition. 




Illus. 6. A SCHOOL BOY SEIZED 
BY A FOX. 

Case 73. See p. 61, 




Illus. 7. Case 347 and her 1 
father. See p. 108. 




Illus. 13. Was bed-ridden 

FOR YEARS. 

Case 86. See p. 136. 




Illus. 14. Triumph over 

demonism. Case 86. 

See p. 137. 



DEMONISM BASED ON PERVERSION OF RELIGION 6l 

Rt. Rev. Frank Weston, D.D., Bishop of Zanzibar, 
in his "The Christ and His Critics", gives testimony 
to actual experience with demonism in his field. 

Canon Arthur F. Williams in our Nos. 145 to 150 
gives ample proof of demonism in New Zealand. He 
also confirms Dr. Wilson's testimony about Africa, giving 
as his authority a medical man, formerly in Africa, but 
now living in New Zealand. 

(3) That demonism is to be traced to idolatry will 
be seen by a careful reading of my data. No. 2 was a 
clear case of demonism originating in fear of the weasel 
spirit which they worship. A weasel had been brought 
to her village, and several persons were affected through 
their fears of this demon. In No. 67 that superstition 
was the prime factor is evidenced by the fact that this 
woman had for twenty years carefully preserved the old 
idol worshipping it faithfully, and whenever she relaxed 
diligence in burning incense the spells would come on. 
When the idol was taken down, she was healed. 

Take my case No. 73, a bright schoolboy.* His 
father had accepted Christianity and the uncle had been 
baptized. In obedience to the urgings of the grandfather, 
still an idolater, the father, against his own judgment, 
again burnt incense. Soon afterwards they were repair- 
ing the home and took down the fox idol. Two or three 
days later, just after supper, this boy was sitting by the 
table, resting his head upon it. All of a sudden, without 
provocation, he became wild, threw his arms and legs 
around and talked in the personality of the fox god. 
The Christians were sent for. They held worship. Ere 
long the boy joined in the singing and in a day or two 
was well. He has had no trouble since, and when I have 
seen him on many occasions he always seemed normal. 

*Illas6. 



62 DEMONISM 

No. 97, another young boy, was taken when he joined 
an idol procession. In No. 58, the trouble originated 
with the worship of the fox god by the grandmother of 
the patient's husband. 

That demonism originates with the worship of idols 
is evidenced by the fact that the demons usually speak 
in the personality of the idols worshipped, and demand 
the burning of incense. In some cases, temporary relief 
may be purchased by yielding to such demands. Thus 
No. 108, the supposed case of tetanus, was relieved as 
soon as the promise was made to burn incense. 

Practically all on the mission field who have come 
in contact with these cases testify that they can be cured 
only on condition of giving up the idolatry. In cases 
which we have failed to cure, we usually find that an 
idol has been hidden under the bed or somewhere. 

Take, e.g., my No. 25. Trouble began with his 
father, who was a wizard and robber besides. He had 
a little idol about a foot long. Christians persuaded him 
to give up the idol and quit practising witchcraft. Not 
long afterwards he died. The wife and the son were 
convinced that the demon had caused the death, so a 
duplicate of the idol was made. Shortly afterwards the 
boy's young wife was afflicted (No. 3). Her brother 
was a Christian man, and while visiting in his home 
she was healed by prayer and much effort on his part. 
Immediately her husband, this No. 25, a hearty young 
farmer, became afflicted, and has been so for several years. 
At any time of day or night he will begin to talk as the 
demon. He talks and chants much like the father and 
the wife did. He feels the demon holding him down. 
When an attack comes on in sleep the family wake him 
and it gradually passes off. On November 30, 1918, his 



DEMONISM BASED ON PERVERSION OF RELIGION 63 

brother-in-law and a Christian tried to persuade him to 
give up the idol. He told them that on account of the 
mother be had to leave it up, but would himself not 
worship it. That day he came before the session. I 
noticed decided nervousness, quick manner of speech, 
nervous laugh. He was not cured and since that has not 
dared to come to the session. 

No. 109 is a case in point. Miss King reported that 
she had known this woman for fifteen years, and had 
often seen her, both when under the influence and when 
not so. The woman said that she was wretched, that 
she longed to be delivered but could not. When Miss 
King talked to her of Jesus the woman cursed her, but 
apologized for it afterwards, when the influence was 
passed. Once she threw water on Miss King in the 
same way. When speaking as the demon the voice was 
changed and the eye abnormal. She practised witchcraft. 
Two years before Miss King's first report (in Dec. 191 5) 
the patient tried to give up idolatry, but still left the idols 
up. Soon afterwards the arm with which she used to 
burn incense was paralyzed. The leg was not affected 
nor the mind, so far as reported. By yielding to the 
idols, the trouble passed off, but she was in bondage and 
deeply troubled. In January 1916, she made up her 
mind definitely and burned the idols. On several occa- 
sions siuce that date Miss King has reported her well. 

We may thus safely lay down the principle that 

DKMON1SM IS ROOTED IN PERVERTED REUGIOUS BELIEFS 

and practices. Now, why should polytheism produce 

demonism and Christianity cure it ? This question we 
shall try to work out in later chapters. 



CHAPTER VI 

PRINCIPLES ON WHICH THE MIND CAN BE 

DEMONIZED. 

We are bearing towards the crux of our problem : 
Can demonism be accounted for without outside influence? 
We now see that superstition or perversion of the religious 
nature of man is the immediate agency, the connecting 
wire, so to speak. But to reach our problem we must 
first find out on what scientific principles this superstition 
works. 

I. In the rapid advance of scientific investigation 
into diseases of psychic origin, several schools of thought 
have arisen, all of them holding more or less of the truth* 

i. Dubois traced the origin of many diseases to 
perverted mental states. He wrote, e.g.:* " People are 
only what they can be by virtue of the mentality with 
which they were endowed and the education which they 
have received." His treatment was based on the idea 
of bringing men to think and act according to reason. 

Certain classes of investigators have worked along 
the lines of psycho-analysis. Their method is to 
analyze the workings of the subconscious mind and 
find therein psychic conditions which have been 
causing ailments, psychological and pathological. The 
Freudian system finds psychic disturbances arising 
from the repression by the conscious mind of sexual 
experiences of the past, which had taken refuge, as it 
were, in the subconscious, and there wrought out 
friction unseen. Especial emphasis is laid on infantile 
perversions of a sexual nature, hidden from parent and 

* " Psychic Treatment of Nervous Disorders," p. 66. 



THE MIND DEMONIZED 65 

nurse, It was Freud's dictum that "no neurosis is pos- 
sible in a normal vita sexualis"* 

Jung, taking the general principles of psychanalysis, 
finds Freud's hypothesis of a past, and often an infantile 
experience making a permanent, determining, dominating 
impression on the whole life insufficiently supported. He 
also puts the trouble in the subconscious, but in the present 
rather than the past. His system is based largely on the 
idea of the libido. By this term psychanalysts signify the 
current of biological energy, flowing through the whole life. 
It is conceived of subjectively and consciously as desire, 
and manifests itself first in the infant suckling, later in 
sexual desire, later still as religion, and so on through 
the life with all its manifold cravings. This libido, ac- 
cording to Jung, meets an obstruction. Environmental 
conditions present an obstacle. The libido endeavors to 
overcome it. Failing that, there is a "regression.' f 
The subconscious mind seeks an outlet for this libido in 
some primitive or abnormal form of gratification, whether 
sexual or otherwise. 

Adlerism is another phase of psychanalysis. One 
phase of it especially concerns us. In the human being 
are organs and functions more or less plastic and adapt- 
able. The libido aims to establish a well-balanced 
harmony. When an organ or function is defective, the 
libido can, to a greater or less extent, remedy the 
defect by the law of compensation. We see this in a 
simpler way thus. When a nerve is injured, another 
nerve can take up its work. When one-half of the 
brain is injured, under some circumstances the other 
half can be brought into play and can take up its work. 



* Brill's 4< Psychanalysis," p. 108. 



66 DEMONISM 

According to Adler, defect in some organ or function may 
work out psychologically in character formation and in 
the psychic life generally. This adjusting is the work of 
the nervous system and the brain. It is, as Adler sees 
it, in the failure of the brain to establish a compensatory 
system, satisfying the demands of the libido, that nervous 
troubles arise.* 

Prince and other students of abnormal psychology 
interpret many psychopathic conditions, including disso- 
ciation of personality, as caused by the impulsive dynamic 
force of the emotions. Intense emotional impulses, says 
be, intensify certain activities and inhibit others. Hence 
arises conflict. In this way systematized groups of ideas 
with emotional tones may become dissociated and operate 
as distinct personalities. In the conflict both conscious 
and unconscious states may be concerned, or in some cases 
the dissociation may be effected by entirely subconscious 
processes.! 

Sidis attributes psychopathic conditions to the waste 
of nerve energy, the using up of what he calls dynamic 
energy — that which operates in normal life — and the 
drawing on reserve energy. As the dynamic and reserve 
energy is used up, psychopathic disturbances arise, emo- 
tional impulses become more violent, there is reversion to 
lower forms of mental activity, neuropathic conditions 
succeed the psychopathic, and as what he calls the static 
and the organic nerve energies are drawn on, the nerve 
cells are affected and disintegration takes place, ending in 
the death of the nerve tissue. The waste of nerve energy 
he lays to the door of the fear impulse based on the 



* See further William A, White's ' * Mechanism of Character 
Formation. ' > 

t "The Unconscious. " 



THE MIND DEMONIZED 67 

biological instinct for the preservation of life.* Sidis does 
not limit psychic perversions to the subconscious. 

2. In these several systems there are similarities and 
diversities. In all of them prominence is given to the 
subconscious, to the wish, to environment, to maladjust- 
ment, to psychic conflict. Some or all of these principles 
have their part to play in demonism as we shall see, but 
no one of them alone can find the solution of our funda- 
mental question : What causes this form of dissociation? 

Let us say with Dubois that it comes from the 
slavery of peoples to their innate and acquired mentality. f 

That is most true, but let us be more specific. On 
what principle can this perverted mental state, the fear 
of demons, lead to demonism ? 

Freud could probably find some father complexes 
and mother complexes among the Chinese, but why 
should such things in China produce demonism while in 
the West they produce insanities and nervous diseases? 
Infantile sexual perversions are not more common in 
China than in the West, if as much so. For twenty- 
seven years I have observed the naked children of 
China and can remember only two or three instances in 
which I have seen erotic manifestations. 

Some of our cases are influenced by Jung's princi- 
ples. I believe he solves for us the problem as to why 
the poor daughters-in-law are so liable to this trouble. 
Only a few days ago I was examining No. 406. Her 
husband, telling how his mother had been demonized 
for thirty or forty years, practising withcraft and break- 
ing out in demon talk almost any time, remarked that 



♦"Causation and Treatment of Psychopathic Diseases," pp. 
129 ff. 

f See his Table of Contents. 



68 DEMONISM 

his wife also was afflicted. When I asked the wife 
herself, she replied that in her maiden home she had 
never been troubled but that as soon as she came into 
this home the demon had taken her and she had been 
afflicted several years. So also said Nos. 58, 386, and 
many others. These girls leave their old homes and 
come into new environment under the domination of a 
Chinese mother-in-law, the last word in autocracy. They 
can do nothing, but must think. Their libido has met 
an obstruction. Their thoughts, forgotten it may be, 
go down into the unconscious and make them fit subjects 
for dissociation. But as to our problem, ask Jung : Why 
does maladjustment to environment produce demonism 
in China and not in the West? You will see the most 
essential factor has not been brought out. 

So, also, with Adlerism. In the West the libido 
striving to work out compensation for an inferior organ 
or function, may lead to hosts of psychoses and neuroses, 
but not to demonism. Why should it do so in the East? 

As to Sidis's principle, in Western lands there is 
fear, fear of God, fear of demons. This combines with 
indifferent stimuli, exhausts the nerve energy, and leads 
to phobias, to paranoias, to catatonic precox, to hysteric 
and neurasthenic conditions, but not to demonism. 

3. As to psychic conflict, in some instances of demon- 
ism we find indications of it as a predisposing factor. But 
my observation is that conflict leads rather to the in- 
sanities than to demonism proper. 

Take my No. 93. In a family there developed 
friction between three brothers over the division of the 
property. The younger of the three was then, October, 
1917, an inquirer. He began to show abnormal excite- 
ment, was troubled with insomnia, his face would flush, 



THE MIND DEMONIZED 69 

He would button-hole people anywhere and everywhere, 
demanding, Do you know Jesus? He began to have 
spells of raving. The voice would become unnatural. 
This continued off and on for several months, until our 
people cured him. Now insomnia is characteristic of 
the insanities, but not particularly so of demonism. 
There was no clear record of either dissociation or control. 
The excitement, the over-religiosity sound more like 
manic-depressive insanity than demonism. 

No. 8 is another case in point. The wife of this 
man was of a well-to-do family and he not poor. But 
they had no child. If he should die, the property would 
go to his brothers. In 1914 he began to be afflicted with 
what was supposed to be a demon. Spells would come 
on. He would lie down for three or four days, neither 
eating nor drinking. So intense was their anxiety to see 
him healed that the wife, on one occasion, with ignorant 
loyalty, cut out a piece of her own arm for him to eat, 
thinking thus to restore him. On Dec. 31, 1918, he was 
shown to me. He was thin and husky, with a cough, 
possibly tubercular. Now this case seems to have arisen 
from the conflict. But there is no record of dissociation 
nor of control. He did not yield to the treatment, as so 
many of the demonized do, and that though he asked 
for prayer and indeed prayed himself. Death resulted 
about a month afterwards. This seems more like disease, 
mental or physical, or both. 

4. An attractive hypothesis is that demonism arises 
from the impact of Christianity on other religious systems. 
The theory is based in part on the erronious idea that 
the demonism in Jesus' time was due to his attacks on 
the old Jewish religion. Some Bible students make the 
same mistake, though they express it differently. 



7° DEMONISM 

Judging from the apparent absence of demonism in the ' 
Old Testament times, they say that in the times of 
the Christ, the demons came forth specially to combat 
him. 

A closer reading of the Bible explodes these ideas. 
The exorcists to whom Christ referred were evidently a 
well-known class of men with practices coming down 
from the ages of the past. Josephus throws light on the 
subject. There were in his clay well-known remedies for j 
demonism, which he believed to have come down from 
the time of Solomon.* In his " Wars with the Jews," ' 
he discourses on the root baaras supposed to heal it, 
and states the established belief that the demons were 
spirits of the dead come back to worry people. f His nar- 
rative paralleling 2 Kings i.J shows that the discussions j 
about Beelzebub in the time of Christ arose from a custom j 
as old as the times of Elijah of going to Baalzebub— the I 
older form of the name— the "Fly," god of Ekron, to 
cure maladies attributed to demons. 

In " Antiquities M § he shows from a discourse which 
he attributes to Jonathan, based of course on Jewish 
opinion and probably on ancient documents, that the 
" evil spirit » which afflicted Saul was a demon and was 
exorcized by David. || 

Expositors have fought shy of this interpretation 
because it would give them a nut to crack. How could 
Jehovah send a demon on Saul ? Having enough nuts 
of ray own to crack, I shall not attempt this one. Suffice 

*" Antiqnites of the Jews," Bk. VIII. 
tBk. VII, ch. 6. 
J"Antiq. f " IX, 2. 
?Bk. VI, ch. 8. 
||I Satn. 18: 10. 



THK MIND DKMONIZED 7 1 

it to say that this statement is on a par with that other 
one, " Jehovah hardened Pharaoh's heart." 

The Scripture record is illuminated by this Jewish 
view that Saul was demonized. We can now see how 
at one minute he could be loving David and making 
him his son-in-law, but in a flash he would be in a 
passion, throwing a javelin at him — this was the 
demon's doings. 

That demonism far antedated the Christ is brought 
out by the Encyclopedia Britannica, Ninth Edition, by 
Tylor's " Primitive Culture/ ' and by other authorities. 

Turning now to China we find that demonism can- 
not be due to the conflict between Christianity and other 
religions. It has prevailed from all past times. The Tso 
Chiien, one of the Chinese classics, written certainly be- 
fore B.C. 206, has the famous passage known to scholars 
by the odd phrase, Kao tsi shang mang tsi hsia. The 
Marquis of Chin dreamed of a demon. A wizard warned 
him not to eat the new wheat. In a second dream he 
saw two boys (demons) discoursing as to vvhether the 
famous physician who had been called could oust them. 
One said that as they were situated above the kao, an 
organ in the region of the heart, and below the mang, 
which Giles translates " throat," he could not hurt them. 
On arriving, the physician said that very thing, that the 
trouble was above the kao, and below the mang, so that 
he could not reach it, whether with needles or with drugs. 
The Marquis rewarded the physician, killed the wizard, 
ate the new wheat and immediately swelled and died. 
The data reported are not sufficient for us to diagnose 
whether this was demonism or disease or both. The 
author and the famous physician believed it to be demon- 
ism, and the case reflects conditions in those times. 



72 DEMONISM 

The "Annals of the Later Divided Kingdoms of the 
Han Dynasty " is one of the established historical works 
of China, written in the Chin Dynasty, before A.D. 419. 
The exposition of these annals* gives the following 
record: "A Prince named Swen Ch'iien killed Kwan 
Yiiin Ch'aug and took his territory. In the feast of 
celebration Swen was praising one of his leaders named 
Ivii Meng, and pouring wine, handed it to him. Lii 
Meng took the wine and was about to drink. Suddenly j 
lyii threw down the cup, gripped his own prince Swen and 
cursed him violently: 'You green-eyed bristly rat, do [ 
you know me?' The terrified courtiers tried to defend 
their prince, but lyii threw him down and with a great 
stride sat on his throne. His eyebrows stuck out. 
Both eyes were distended like suns. With a loud voice 
he said : ' From the time I went out to subdue the i 
Yellow Turban brigands I ran things for thirty years. ; 
By intrigue you have ruined me. While alive I could 
not overcome you, but now dead I must seize your soul. | 
I am Kwan Yiiin Ch'ang.' With that Lii Meng fell 
prone on the floor, blood flowing from the seven 
apertures, and died. ,, 

Now this story may be mere superstitious babble. 
But the record is from a history fully as well established ! 
as Thucydides, Xenophon, Tacitus. However we may 
interpret it, there is ample analogy in records of to-day 
for enabling us to receive as fact such a record of a 
courtier becoming dissociated, assuming the personality 
of a dead enemy, as such assaulting his prince, and him- 
self dying under the experience. 

We may take further testimony from a reputable 
pharmacopeia, generally used by Chinese doctors and 

♦Vol. XI, ch. 77. 



THE MIND DKMONIZHD 73 

officially sanctioned (The "Pen Ts'ao Kang Moh "). 
It was written in the time of the Manchu Emperor, Swen 
Chih, A. D. 1644. In Vol. XII, under ri Herbs, tractylis 
ovata, history of the plant" we read: "The encyclopedias 
say that in Chehkiaug Province a married woman named 
Kao had a disease. She would speak abnormally. The 
spirit of her dead husband possessed her. The family 
burnt this plant and the demon immediately sought to 
leave her." Here follows also the case of a Kiangsi 
scholar demonized. 

These cases are selected from reliable works. Vol- 
umes could be filled from those of less repute. But 
Christianity made no considerable impression on China 
until the time of Kanghsi, A. D. 1662, later than any of 
these cases. 

From the above it is clear that demonism prevailed 
widely in ages before Christ came, and continued in the 
East for centuries before Christianity was heard of. It 
is impossible, therefore, to account for it on the ground 
of psychic conflict arising from the antagonism of the old 
and the new religions. 

With this, as with other forms of psychic conflict, 
the tendency is strongly towards the insanities rather than 
demonism. No. 133 is a case in point. This was plainly 
manic-depressive insanity, and was so diagnosed by Dr. 
L,. Nelson Bell. Mrs. J. R, Graham saw an attack — the 
first one so far as the manifestations were reported. The 
patient, a woman, suddenly sprang up and begau to jump 
three feet high, whirling around as she jumped. She 
now talked very rapidly and chanted three word phrases. 
She believed herself under the control of something, she 
knew not whether God or a demon. It became necessary 
to chain her and she was sent thus to the mission 



74 DEMONISM 

hospital. After being released, she struck Dr. Bell with 
the chain and had to be chained up again. She improved 
under treatment, but did not entirely recover and was 
taken away. 

This case may be clearly traced to the conflict of 
religions. She had been a Taoist devotee of unusual 
devotion and had attained a Taoist rank almost equal to 
canonization. She lived in an idolatrous widow's home, 
to which ordinarily neither Chinese men nor missionaries 
were admitted. There is no report of trouble before the 
missionaries were invited there to treat a disease. Her 
conception of control was not expressed in idolatrous 
phraseology as that of a fox or a weasel demon. She 
came gradually to speak of " The True God " controlling 
her, using a distinctively Christian term. 

This is a typical case of how the conflict of religions 
may affect a nervous system in a personality not properly 
broadened and harmonized. A mind with an intense 
devotion, isolated from all contact with the outside world, 
mulling in its own little round of thought, suddenly gets 
a new idea with a powerful emotive stimulus, and is 
thrown out of balance. 

Conflict is the dominating factor in many of the 
insanities, but with demonism another factor is even 
more prominent. 

II. The principle on which superstition leads to 
denionism is the Law of Suggestion. All schools of psy- 
chiatry recognize and use this principle. We shall see 
below that Prince's emotive impulse and Sidis's nerve 
exhaustion bear strongly on this phase of our subject. 
But first, for the sake of the uninformed, I must show 
what science means by suggestion and that it is the pre- 
dominating causative factor. 



THE MIND DEMONIZED 75 

i. The Law of Suggestion is the principle on which 
science interprets the phenomena of mesmerism, hyp- 
notism, mental healing and the like. The general public 
have always been shy of this subject. It looks uncanny. 
Hence poor Mesmer died in poverty and exile, while 
Braid, to whom we owe the term hypnotism, had his life 
embittered by social ostracism. Science owes much to 
such men, even though it discards many of their theories. 
Mesmer held that in " mesmerizing " people the operator 
exercised power over them, that from him emanated what 
he called " animal magnetism, " and it was this which 
influenced the subject. 

Braid interpreted the matter along physiological 
lines. In his day psychiatry was not developed. One 
of his methods was to have the subject look fixedly at 
a bright light. Hypnotism would result. Modern 
psychiatry, working on the principle of suggestion, also 
uses some physical means, but they are subsidiary. 

Science holds that hypnotization is an automatic 
reaction on the part of the subject ; that under proper 
conditions a suggestion is received by the subject and he 
automatically hypnotizes himself. To illustrate, at the 
sight of food, one becomes hungry; on going into a dark 
room, the pupils dilate. These are both automatic 
reactions of the nervous system. In hypnotizing a 
subject, the operator is the directing mind, and causes 
the hypnotization, but he does not do so by exerting 
power, as Mesmer thought. What he really does is to 
stage the proper conditions, — in which both psychic and 
physical methods may be brought into play — and then 
to inject into the mind of the subject the belief that he 
is being hypnotized. The subject's mind and nervous 
system react to this suggestion and hypnotization results. 



76 DEMONISM 



We have seen that demonisui is dissociation. But 
hypnotism is merely the old name for artificial dis- 
sociation. Hypnotism is now fully recognized and used 
by scientists of the first rank. The present knowledge 
of hysteria came largely through study and experiment 
by hypnotic methods. It was Charcot and the Paris 
School of psychiatrists who developed this study. 
The Nancy School took up the subject and carried iti 
further, proving that hypnotism by suggestion may be 
used with the normal as well as with hysterics. The 
particular form of hysteria which we call dissociation 
of personality has been studied chiefly by hypnotic 
methods. Many of the well-known cases of dissociation 
were discovered by artificially hypnotizing hysterical 
patients. 

2. Those who have studied demonism at first hand 
have generally recognized the element of suggestion in 
it. In dealing with the Morzinnes epidemic, M. Constans 
recognized it and in one case used hypnotism as a means 
of treatment.* 

In manj?, if not all, of my cases suggestion is 
evident. My Nos. 417 and 418 were what I call virgin 
cases. The witches sometimes tell a young girl that a 
spirit has transmigrated into her, who in the other world 
was a slave girl, under vows of perpetual virginity ; hence 
that if she, the girl, gets married, she will certainly die. 
This terrible form of suggestion is all too fatal. Both of 
these two cases were so influenced. No. 418 had been 
ill, off and on, for two years, and whenever the family 
began preparations for her wedding, she would be taken 
with a spell. Under our ministry both of these cases 



*See " Dictionary of Psychological Medicine ' ? under 
" Demonomania. ,, 



THE MIND DEMONIZED J J 

seemed to be healed. With No. 417 preparations had 
already been going ahead for the funeral. But our 
people raised her up. Later reports, however, would 
indicate that they have probably again fallen under the 
power of the witches. 

No. 141 was a demonized boy. Christians healed 
him, requiring the family to put away idolatry. But the 
mother, hesitating to destroy her god, gave it to a 
married sister. When the boy, later, saw it again in the 
sister's house, suggestion brought back his old trouble 
and he was down for a week. Then he was brought 
to Mrs. J. W. Paxton, looking very ill and speaking 
strangely. He was healed, but friends advised him to 
make his living by peddling an article used in idolatrous 
worship. This, too, had in it suggestion and another 
attack occurred. Only when finally rid of everything 
suggesting idolatry was he permanently healed. I saw 
him six months later, normal. 

3. The whole train of thought in preceding chapters 
may be summarized as proof that suggestion underlies 
demonism. (1) Demonism cannot be classed with the 
other insanities. (2) It cannot be accounted for on 
merely pathological grounds. (3) No other psychologi- 
cal principle can account for it independently of sugges- 
tion. (4) This hypothesis is based on well-established 
principles and is in line with the opinions of authorities. 
(5) It allows for the demoniziug of the healthy as well 
as of the pathological. (6) It accounts for all the 
kaleidoscopic symptoms. (7) It is consonant with the 
healing by psychic means alone. 

This gives us a rational interpretation of this malady. 
The fear of demons brings the fixation of attention, the 
monotony of thought, the limiting of the field of con- 



7S DEMONISM 

sciousness, and other conditions which Sidis shows are 
necessary to hypnotization.* 

A subject thus hypnotized follows out passively 
false suggestions inherent in ignorant mental concepts. 
Take a subject hypnotized before an audience. The 
operator tells him he is a dog. Had he never seen a dog, 
he would not know what to do. But he has in his mind 
already the concept "dog." Immediately he gets on 
all fours, barks, bites. Now take a demon case. The 
subject believes himself to be under the control of the 
Fox God. There is no Fox God. He does not imper- 
sonate the biological concept of the fox. But there is 
in his mind the superstitious concept of the spirit fox 
and he automatically does what he believes that spirit 
would do. 

This is not imaginary, it is not feigned. It is a 
most real psycho-physical condition. It is abject bond- 
age by this bypnotization of the mind to all the mass of 
superstition and folklore of these old countries. 

4. Now let us return to the views of psychiatrists. 
We have traced demonism to the law of suggestion. Fear 
and psychic conflict without suggestion do not produce 
demonism. A sporadic case in Western lands like that 
of Gottleibin Dittus does not disprove, but confirms this 
position. Examination of such cases will show that 
there was belief that demons can possess men. 

But Prince shows f that suggestion itself, having 
the force of a volition or unexpressed wish, gives rise to 
emotive impulse and promotes conflict- We may thus 
recognize suggestion itself as the casus belli, so to speak. 
And Sidis has shown that "the fear instinct and its 

* " Psychology of Suggestion," p. 49. 
I li The Unconscious," pp. 72, 73. 



THE MIND DEMONIZED 79 

offspring — anxiety .... weaken, dissociate and paralyze 
the functions of body and mind. ,, * 

We can see, then, how suggestion operates ; inten- 
sifying emotive impulses, causing fear and anxiety, and 
thus making one liable to hypnotization. 

But note the word liable. Granting these environ? 
mental conditions, the prevalence of the fear, how comes 
it that some are demonized and some not ? If this belief 
alone were the efficient cause of the demonism, all under 
these conditions would be demonized. Just so in Western 
lands, many are fit subjects for hypnotizing, but they ar$ 
not hypnotized without a hypnotizing agent. 

A still more fundamental question is, Whence comes 
this environment ? By analyzing demonism as hypnotism 
we have by no means accounted for it on a subjective, 
basis. We have merely found the modus, the scientific 
principles on which it operates. The discovery of the 
law of gravitation did not account for the motions of the 
spheres. Deeper questions are yet before us. 



•"Causation and Treatment of Psychopathic Diseases,'* 
P. 43- 



CHAPTER VII 
SATANIC ORIGIN OF DEMONISM. 

In all ages, men have tried to disprove or laugh off j 
the fact that the world has an enemy, Satan, who worksb 
against all that is good. The facts of demonism confirm 
the Bible on this point. 

At this statement my readers will be variously! 
affected according to their customary attitude of mind. 1 ) 
The religious will read with avidity, the anti-religious^ 
will scoff. Scientists will endeavor to read without bias. 
But in conversation several expressed the view that belief 
in spiritualities should be accepted only as a last resort. 
This, too, is an unjustifiable bias. If the arguments for, 
outweigh those against the influence of spiritualities, to:; 
tip the scales with a materialistic doubt is not scientific/ 
impartiality. 

i. I,et us first get rid of a misconception, viz., that 
the advance of science, dispelling superstition, has dis- 
proved the existence of spiritualities. We need to analyze* 
the situation. Belief in spirits — aside from Biblical and' 
theological apologetics — has heretofore rested largely on 
phenomena apparently not explainable on scientific prin- 
ciples, leading to the hypothesis of causation by non- 
human agencies. Superstitious ideas about direct inter- i 
ference of spirits in the ordinary course of nature have 
long since been discredited. There yet remains what 
are called the occult phenomena. The general tendency: 
of science is to attribute these to the subconscious 
powers on one or other of several hypotheses. The 
Societies for Psychic Research stand for the existence of 
human personalities after death and the possibility of 
their communicating with, and thus influencing men. 



SATANIC ORIGIN OF DEMONISM 8l 

Wallace and others of the earlier members interpreted all 
occult phenomena on the hypothesis of continuous spirit 
influence. Myers, in bringing out the principles of 
disintegrated, i.e., dissociated personalities, took the 
position that with living beings a dissociated personality 
could operate independently, thus accounting for these 
occult powers, which he designated as sensory auto- 
matisms, motor automatisms, etc. From this starting- 
point he held that the recognition of such powers on the 
part of the living relieved the necessity of hypothetizing 
the continuous spirit influence and at the same time 
tended to the comprehension of the spirit world and a 
more rational conception thereof. 

It is attempted to account for these occult pheno- 
mena on the theories of telepathy, clairvoyance, clair- 
audience, and the like, as powers of the normal integrated 
mind. Such theories are still tentative. 

Again, cautious science, afraid of either of these 
views, recognizes hyperesthesia, a faculty allowing for 
the extension to a limited degree of the perceptive powers 
of man. This faculty is, however, too limited to account 
for all the known phenomena. 

In demonism these occult powers occur. Case No. 
124 lived ten miles from the'city* where the missionaries 
were. Her husband went for the Christians. In the 
meantime the patient, on her bed, began to tell just what 
the party were doing. i Now they have started. Now 
they are going along by such a street. Now they have 
stopped and taken off their hats. Now they are at the 
door.' Thus she followed exactly their every' move- 
ment, even to the stopping on the way for prayer. 

The interpreting of these occult phenomena as 
functions of human powers, whether subconscious or 



82 DEMONISM 

otherwise, does not antagonize, but rather strengthen! 
the hypothesis that there are spiritualities. It doei, 
effectively disabuse the superstitious idea that spiritual-; 
ities manipulate affairs without regard to scientific prin- 
ciples. But if science can see principles on which it ma>, 
be possible to understand the influence of spiritualities, 
it gives a " provisional intelligibility," as Myers would. 
say, that may lead in time to demonstrable proof. We. 
see that a living human organism may form one or more 
secondary personalities, alternating with the primary.^ ,, 
Prince shows us* that a co-conscious secondary person-, 
ality may be formed, as Sally was, early in life, incubate 
and grow unseen in the subconscious, having perceptions, 
memory, thoughts unknown to the primary. Myers, 
would hold that such a secondary personality can function 
apart from the body. Certainly the functions attributed, 
to the subconscious, whether or not formed into a co-con- 
scious personality, are not unlike what religious writers 
attribute to the soul. If we can find out the workings of 
the soul in the living man, problems of the future look 
less incomprehensible. Science has not negatived the 
existence of spiritualities, but rather is feeling for light. 

But I do not base my argument for the existence of 
Satan on these occult phenomena. We shall see, as we 
proceed, that the facts of demonism, as interpreted inj 
terms of modern science, lead us to a Satan. 

II. We have found that demonism is, as to origin, 
essentially hypuotic. In looking for the ultimate origin , 
our next step is to consider the two phases of the subject, 
auto- and volitional hypnotization, and the bearings of 
this on our problem. 

♦"Journal of Abnormal Psychology," Vol. XV, Nos. 2 and 
3, June to September, 1920. 



SATANIC ORIGIN OF DEMONISM 83 

Let us keep in mind that all hypnotization is auto- 
matic. Given the necessary conditions— what some 
1 have called an attitude of "expectant attention M — and 
J a suggestion, the human organism automatically slips 
\ the bolt and unshifts itself. What is meant by the term 
13 auto-hypnotization M is that the conditions arise and 
a suggestion occurs accidentally, as we say, i.e., without 
known purpose. 

My case No. 58, Mrs. Ts'wei, originated thus. The 
J husband's grandmother used to be a witch, a devotee of 
ij the Fox Spirit and controlled by it. At her death the 
I trouble came upon her daughter-in-law. At the death 
] of this second Mrs. Ts'wei, it came upon her daughter- 
in-law, our No. 58. In a little village, remote from 
all broadening influences, bound down by the conviction 
of the supernatural powers of the fox, the attention 
riveted by anticipation due to the family history, the 
conditions had arisen, this No, 58\s mind had seized a 
suggestion and a secondary personality had split off. 
The conditions necessary to hypnotization were inherent 
in the environment, and we may consider this auto- 
hypnotization. 

Tracing demonism to auto-hypnotization does not, 
however, solve the problem as to its ultimate origin. 
The question still faces us, Whence comes this environ- 
ment ? How is it that men worship foxes and mythical 
beings ? How is it that they believe in the power of 
such spiritualities to " possess M people ? And the one 
question that persists is, Whence comes the evil quality 
in demonism? 

III. The question as to origin of the environment 
and of the evil quality in this environment resolves itself 
into two questions, Is there First Cause in general? 



84 DEMONISM 

And, Is there a First Cause of Evil ? We will now 
discuss the first of these questions. 

(i) Are second causes adequate to account 
for the universe? The law of cause and effect it 
wide-reaching in the psychological as well as the 
physiological spheres. The disposing of conditions 
which lead to environmental suggestion and prepare a 
mind to receive it automatically may be considered but, 
links in the chain of cause and effect. Even the human 
will is influenced by heredity, education, etc. The 
judgments, emotions, purposes of the Anglo-Saxon 
would be impossible in the Hottentot or the Mala\ T , at 
least without bringing them under the environmental 
influences that have prevailed in civilized lands. 

Even the ethical may be influenced by this law. 
Factors psychic and factors physical may affect moral, 
Indeed religious phenomena. Structure of the brain, 
heredity, disease, may have much to do with whether a 
man is morally good or morally evil. 

In these causes the psychic and the physical mutu- 
ally interact* Scientists of a type now passing away, 
when the} 7 touched the border line of physiology and 
psychology, came to a halt. But modern investigators 
are losing sight of this line. Adolf Meyer speaks of the! 
"medically useless contrast of mental and physical."*! 
Scientists now trace psychic effects to physical causes, 
and with almost equal facility, physical effects to psychic 
causes. Defects in the brain, causing psychic abnorm- 
alities, may be traced back to sin and ignorance in earlier 
links of the chain. 



* " Journal of the American Medical Association." September 
4, 19*5. 



SATANIC ORIGIN OF DKMONISM 8$ 

Yet, after all, the cause and effect principle itself 
presupposes a cause. The steam engine is a piece of 
mechanism based on the expansive power of heat. But 
the law of heat expansion could never have made a stea» 
engine. The law of gravitation makes water run down 
a hill, but this law could never have made the water nor 
the hill, nor put them together. Scientific I laws are 
themselves dead, mechanical principles. They cannot 
even manipulate themselves, so as to make an engine or 
a stream of water. How much less could they have 
created themselves and all things. 

The law of cause and effect gives a working hypo- 
thesis as to the modus of phenomena ; but the human 
mind refuses to be satisfied with any philosophy whick 
leaves the cosmos as a mechanical automaton, a vast: 
machine, self-created, self-starting, self-running, with 
no dynamic, no governing mentality behind it. 

(2) Furthermore, biological evolution, when it leaves 
ultimate cause out of the equation, try as it will, cannot 
account for the noblest ideals of man, especially sei,f- 
sacrifice, ai/truism. Its principles are essentially and 
necessarily self-centric. It is based on the survival of 
the fittest, the right of the stronger to live at the expense 
of the weaker. Darwinianism unmodified, leads logically 
and actually to Prussianism — the right of might — and 
aspires to the superman as the next step in evolution. 

It has been attempted to account for altruism by 
sayiug that nature empirically finds the advantages of 
self-sacrifice for the common good, and thus has devel- 
oped this principle. This lowers ethics to utilitarianism 
and emasculates nobility. It accounts for nobility by 
denying its existence ! Again it has been attempted to 
interpret self-sacrifice on the principle of overfunctioning, 



jB6 DEMONISM 

that the ethical is a biological, useful apparatus and self 
destruction is the abnormal functioning of this principle. 
Then self-sacrifice becomes an abnormality,, a psychic 
excrescence. This cannot be accepted. There is in man; 
enough of God to prove that God is. A Divine ultimate \ 
cause is an inevitable hypothesis. 

(3) Let us look at this from another viewpoint, viz., 
the relation between freedom and necessity. This 
is a battle ground famous both in theology and science. 
Religious thinkers have lined up behind Augustine and 
Calvin, or Pelagius and Arminius, Some scientists* 
advocate a determinism which would make a Calvinisms 
hair stand on end. On the other hand Sir Oliver Lodge t 
and Miinsterberg, usually antagonists, both bring out 
the argument that the objective relations of man, the 
function of the faculties of a human personality, are 
servants ; that there is a life which dominates these, and 
which cannot be subordinated to their control. Lodge 
says, e.g., " Terrestrial animals are all, in a sense, one r 
family; and their hereditary links with the psychical 
universe consist of the physiological mechanism called 
brain and nerve. But these most interesting material 
structures are our servants, not our masters." f 

Miinsterberg draws a distinction between the psycho- 
physiological realm of mechanical cause-and-effect rela- 
tionships and what he calls the inner life, the true life ; 
which consists, as he holds, of a succession of will- 
attitudes, which are free and dominating. Thus he 
says : J 



*See, e.g., Dubois' " The Psychic Treatment of Nervous 
Disorders. 

t " Mau and the Universe." 

X " Psychology and Life," p. 31. 



SATANIC ORIGIN OF DEMONISM 87 

"The real will is not a perceivable object, and 
therefore neither cause nor effect, but has its value and 
meaning in itself ; it is not an exception to the world of 
laws and causes ; no, there would not be any meaning in 
asking whether it has a cause or not, as only existing 
objects can belong to the series of causal relations. The 
real will is free, and it is the work of such free will to 
picture, for its own purposes, the world as an unfree, a 
causally connected, an existing system ; and if it is the 
I triumph of modern psychology to master even the best 
I in man, the will, and to dissolve even the will into its 
atomistic sensations, and their causal unfree play, we 
are blind if we forget that this transformation and con- 
struction is itself the work of the will which dictates 
ends, and is the finest herald of its freedom." 

Again he says :•* " Values and duties, freedom and 
responsibility belong to the inner life in its real activity, 
but not to the system of psychological facts into which 
we have transformed the inner experience. M 

The effort to put God out of His universe, to bind 
all down under a blind, mechanical fate, ever recurs 
under various mutations of philosophy. Yet a historical 
review of the race shows that man refuses to give up 
belief in a region where the will, be it human or divine, 
chooses, ... a region of freedom and responsibility. 
Neither man nor God can be reduced to a mere cog on 
a wheel. 

IV. Having, then, established the fact that there 
must be First Cause or causes outside of and overruling 
the mechanical second causes, we come to the more 
specific problem, Is there a First Cause of Evil ? 

* Page 70. 



88 DEMONISM 

i . Those who believe in God as nionotheistically con- 
ceived, catinot think of Hirn as less than perfect. Hence 
they cannot attribute evil to God. But in this present 
realm of cause and effect, there is no place for an effect 
without a cause. Evil must have a source outside of 
God and outside of this law of cause and effect. This 
leads us to another free-will First Cause. 

2. The facts of demonism confirm this postulate. 
The evil quality manifested in demonism cannot be 
accounted for except on the hypothesis of Satanic origin. 

Question will be raised, Are there not cases of good 
spirits taking control of a dissociated personality ? Such 
may be possible. Joan of Arc and Swedenborg at once 
come to mind. Yet they do not seem to have lost their 
personalities. The good spirits seemed to communicate 
with them and help them in their normal personalities. 
What looks more like control by good spirits is to be 
seen in some of the cases reported by the Societies for 
Psychic Research, e.g., the case of D.D. Home (reported 
by Sir William Crookes) and that of William Stainton 
Moses (studied by Edmund Gurney and F. W. H. Myers) . 

If these cases are good spirits, then it strengthens 
my claim that the moral quality must have an origin. 
In any case they are not to be classified with demonism, 
except in so far as both are hysteria, for they do not 
appear in the environment which produces demonism. 
As they are sporadic, we must infer special causation 
with each case, whether physical or psychic. The 
demonized are a well-defined class of cases, readily 
diagnosed by those familiar with the malady. 

Those demonized, so far as reports go, are all marked 
by wickedness, malice, evil of every kind, with no good, 
no love, no kindliness. Neither I nor any of those who 



SATANIC ORIGIN OF DEMONISM 89 

have observed these cases have ever heard of a good 
demon. Even the healing of diseases is done in a spirit 
of grasping for power over the sufferer, giving a tempor- 
ary respite, but demanding perpetual slavery. 

Take Miss King's night-walker, No. 113. She 
was an old woman with a little grandchild. For four- 
teen years she had walked the streets of Yaugcbow every 
night. The policemen all knew her. She had no volition 
of her own. It would be benevolent indeed to heal a 
patient and subject her to such bondage ! No one who 
knows demonism in its haunts would raise any question 
that it is absolutely and irrevocably evil. 

If we take these as auto-suggestion, then the environ- 
ment must bear the blame ; but environment which can 
produce a uniformly evil affection like this must be itself 
evil, and must have an evil origins If the presence of 
evil in the world in a general way presupposes an evil 
First Cause, how much more when we see evil en bloc ! 

3. That there is a Satan and that Satan is respon- 
sible for demonism is put beyond question by the fact 
that the lines of demarcation betw T een the countries which 
have not demonism and those which have it coincide 
with the limits of Christian influence. 

In the West, the only genuine case of demonism I 
have found, in present times, is that of Gottleibin Dittus, 
recorded in the " Biography of Rev. Jno. Christopher 
Blumbardt."* This was a young woman, sickly, shy, 
very religious. 

She told Blumhardt that a woman of her acquain- 
tance, who had died two years before, appeared to her. 
Every time she appeared the girl had a convulsion. 
After recovering consciousness, she had no recollection 
* See Nevius and others. 



90 DEMONISM 

of events. There were unaccountable noises, wiudows 
rattled, plaster fell. When Blumhardt invoked the 
name i( Jesus, " she shivered and a voice not her own 
replied, "That name I cannot bear." There was talk- 
ing in the demon personality. The demons claimed to 
be 1,067 in number. They spoke all the languages of 
Europe and some that Blumhardt and others did not 
recognize. She was healed by fasting and prayer. 

It has been supposed that the case known as "Old 
Stump," studied by Dr. Ira Barrows, was demonism. 
With this young girl, her right hand seems to form an 
independent personality which she calls Old Stump. She 
seems to know nothing of what Old Stump does. At 
times she raves, tears hair and clothing, but Old Stump 
tries to hold the left hand down. She dislikes Old 
Stump, although the latter is benevolent in disposition. 
She pounds and pricks this right hand. At night, when 
apparently asleep, she sits up and the right hand writes, 
but when she wakes she knows nothing of what she 
wrote. She writes poetry, Latin and French with Old 
Stump, although normally she knows neither I^atin nor 
French. When her delirium is at its height, the right 
hand is rational, asking and answering questions in 
writing, trying to pull the bedclothes over her, etc. 

Now this case resembles demonism in that it is a 
dissociation, but there the resemblance ends. It does 
not come from fear of demons, there is no demon control, 
no evil quality in Old Stump. When not in delirium, 
the normal personality does not reappear, thus showing 
more or less permanent, diseased conditions. 

Jung's patient, a girl who in the dissociated person- 
ality took the name "Ivenes," also resembles demonism. 
She once took part in table turning for fun, and thus it 



SATANIC ORIGIN OF DEMONISM 91 

was discovered that she was a medium. She would 
have periods of trance, ending usually in catalepsy, 
Once she was hysterically blind for half an hour. In 
the trances, under the " guidance M of her grandfather, 
whom she had never seen, she would see spirits, both 
benevolent and malevolent. When in the deep trance 
she would speak in an altered voice and in high classical 
German, such as her grandfather, a clergyman, would 
have used. She represented herself to have been pre- 
viously incarnated a number of times, thus becoming the 
mother of thousands. A mystic system of world forces 
was developed by Ivenes, which she claimed was given 
her by the " star-dwellers/' but after this the seances 
ceased. She could not revive them, and six months 
later was caught in deception. 

Jung diagnosed this case as arising from sexual 
disturbances of puberty. There was clear hereditary 
influence and marked maladjustment to environment. 
The mother was rough and vulgar, while the father was 
too busy to notice her. She would be afraid to go home. 
She was absent-minded, fond of day-dreaming. The 
matter did not originate in superstition, there was no 
demon, no evil quality, no antagonism to the name 
" Jesus," none of the most marked symptoms of 
demonism. 

In Western asylums are many insane and hysterics 
who manifest symptoms somewhat resembling demonism; 
but to identify them would be as scientific as to identify 
malaria and diphtheria because both have fever, or 
delirium tremens and typhoid because both have delirium., 

While in enlightened Christian countries demonism 
is so rare as to be a negligible quantity, we have seen 
that it appears in multitudes wherever Christ is not 



92 DEMONISM 

known. China, Japan, Korea are full of it. India, too, 
is a non-Christian land, for the British Government 
zealously protects Buddhism and Mohammedanism. 
Nevius gives two capable witnesses to demonism there, 
the one a bishop and the other a British official. Miss 
MacNaughton sends me two clear cases from her India 
hospital. James Moore Hickson, known as " The 
Healer," writes me that in India he healed two hundred 
cases of demonism in one meeting. In New Zealand, for 
twenty years, Rev. Canon Williams has been observing 
demonism and sends notes on six cases he has witnessed. 
This shows its prevalence in the Pacific Islands. Else- 
where I have given evidence for Africa and the Moslem 
lands. 

In all these countries the demonism is clearly differ- 
entiated from the insanities and dissociations seen in 
Christian lands. It originates in superstition ; it is char- 
acteristically evil ; there are always one or more demons 
in control; the affection passes from one person to 
another and back again ; there is inteuse hatred of the 
name ' ' Jesus ' ' ; they are healed by prayer and com- 
mand in the name of Jesus. 

This line of cleavage between Christian and other 
lands cannot be ignored. 

How can it be accounted for ? By racial charac- 
teristics ? In the past, from Egypt downwards the 
Western world has seen successive races reach high 
intellectual development. In the East, China and India 
have at times surpassed the West intellectually. Yet 
none of these races rid the world of demonism. Or can 
we account for this line of cleavage on the ground that 
Christianity is the product of higher education ? But 
why is it that Europe and America have this education 



SATANIC ORIGIN OF DEMONISM 93 

and other lands have it not ? The only comprehensive 
differential is the Christian religion. It must therefore 
be causal rather than resultant. 

Japan now ranks as one of the great powers. In 
medicine she has made such advances that the sanitation 
in her armies was the wonder of the world ; and her 
scientists are inventors of the first rank. Yet Japan has 
not rid her country of demonism. Educational systems 
based on wrong conceptions of divinity have never been 
able to throw off demonism. It is safe to predict that 
Japan will continue to have demonism so long as she has 
idolatry, which is the worship of demons in the primary 
sense of the term. 

The only system that has gotten rid of demonism is 
that based on what I have called normal, scientific 
religion, the monotheistic conception of systematized law 
under Supreme guidance. This system must be based 
on fact, on truth. And, furthermore, monotheism must 
be imbued with the Spirit of the Christ. This Spirit 
threw off the shackles of Judaism ; in the Reformers it 
threw off papal ecclesiasticism ; in Copernicus, Galileo, 
Columbus, it threw off the autocracy of mistaken dogma ; 
it is this living Spirit in man that is freeing the world 
from the degrading influence of the Anti-Divine, the 
Satan. 



CHAPTER VIII 
SATANIC DISSOCIATION. 

Since there is, then, an ultimate source of evil in the 
world, a Satan to whom or to which we may refer the 
environment in which demonism occurs, need we also 
infer a more direct Satanic influence in the actual cases 
of demonism? 

Science has discovered truths which Esculapius, 
e.g., could not have believed possible, viz., that maladies 
physically manifested, hysteria, asthma, and the like, 
may be traced back to psychic causes. There may be 
yet higher possibilities before us. It is clearly within 
the range of anticipation that men, on scientific grounds, 
independently of religious faith, may come to recognize 
both God and Satan. 

At any rate, science is now removing many of the 
obstacles to the recognition of spiritualities. The law of 
suggestion provides a tenable hypothesis on which to 
understand their influence over men. 

We have seen that the influence of the Divine i^ 
ordinarily mediate, i.e., by the disposing of conditions, 
the manipulating of secondary causes, working through 
and by this vast system which He has created. If there 
be Satanic influence, w r e may reasonably understand it 
in a similar way, that Satan has knowledge of, and 
power over, world conditions, not to arbitrarily interfere 
with, but to work through, natural law. 

This brings up the question, Does Satan have such 
power over human affairs as to cause dissociation, not 
only as the original source of evil in the environmental 
conditions, but by purposive psychic influence, over an 



SATANIC DISSOCIATION 95 

individual, by volitional suggestion, whether with or 
without second causes as the case may be ? 

The proposition that there is a Satan, who does 
influence men by suggestion is, of course, acceptable to 
those who acknowledge the tenets of the Christian 
churches. Indeed they may accept the proposition so 
readily as to confuse the condition of Satanic dissociation 
with the evil tendencies of minds not dissociated. A 
tyrant who, in his lust for power, slays innocent citizens 
is instigated by Satan, but he is not demon-" possessed." 
There is no change of personality. 

For the cause of lust and cruelty — back of even 
social suggestibility " — no adequate interpretation has 
been found except on the hypothesis of a Satan with 
power to suggest. If there be, then, a Satan with power 
to influence men in the ordinary sense, will not such a 
Satan be able also to hypnotize by volitional sugges- 
tion ? If so, the dissociating of the demonized may be, 
in all or some of the cases, due to such suggestion. 
Satan would then control the demonized personalities, 
directing them even as the human operator controls 
his hypnotized subject. In demonism there are data 
which tend to substantiate this tentative hypothesis as 
a matter of fact. 

i. In Western lands automatic, "accidental " dis- 
sociation more usually occurs where there are patho- 
logical or psychopathological predisposing factors. * 
Looking over thirty-one well-known cases, I find only 
four in which there is not clear record of trauma, 
epilepsy, lesion, exhaustion, or at least continued hysteric 
and neurasthenic conditions. Even of the four some 
authorities question the data in the Mary Reynolds case 

*See authorities in Chapter IV. 



96 DEMONISM 

and attribute the Ansel Bourne case to epilepsy in youth. 
But volitional suggestion is not in any way dependent on 
such predisposing factors. Forel says: " I cannot 
emphasize too strongly that suggestibility is an abso- 
lutely normal characteristic of the normal human brain." 
The Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology takes this 
as the consensus of scientific opinion. This is not incom- 
patible with Sidis's position that hypnosis is abnormal 
as contrasted with normal suggestibility. Hypnotiza- 
tion by normal suggestion brings about the abnormal 
condition, hypnosis. 

Now in demonism the most hearty, robust, stolid 
are affected. My No. 58 I found to be a buxom young 
woman with a baby and pregnant. Her mother, fifty- 
nine years old, walked in five miles to see her. The 
old lady was the picture of health. She reported her 
husband also healthy, and that her seven children were 
hearty, even this one having never had any illness until 
the demon came on her. No. 58 was given a clinical 
examination by J. W. Hewett, M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P., 
and pronounced normal. 

My No. 405 is a little old lady of sixty-four as spry 
as a kitten. If there be pathological conditions, it would 
take a clinical sleuth to detect them. Yet she has been 
liable to demonism practically all her life. When I last 
saw her, October E i2th, 1920, she had two typical spells. 
They would come on with terrific yawns. The face 
assumed an aspect of malignity with a defiant pertness 
pathetically inconsistent in such a wizened little old 
body. When led out to be photographed, the demon 
struggled and fought. During the hymn she lay prone on 
the ground, chanting in a weird monotone. But imme- 
diately afterwards, while praying, I peeped up and almost 



SATANIC DISSOCIATION 97 

laughed to see her standing beside me normal, silently 
looking on with a curious, interested attention.* Unfor- 
tunately, as she is stone deaf, we cannot reach her mind, 
to cure her. 

In many of the cases there is no indication of patho- 
logical or psychopathological conditions other than the 
environment. 

Now is such hypnotization adequately accounted for 
on the hypothesis of autosuggestion ? To say that the 
environmental conditions are psychopathological does 
not cover the ground. Environmental conditions may 
give the soil for psychogenesis, but that does not give a 
neurological predisposition or a nervous instability in the 
individual. With this class of cases, so many of whom 
are otherwise in normal health, the dissociating is artifi- 
cial rather than spontaneous, and presupposes suggestion 
from without. The characteristic evil quality points to 
Satan as the hypnotizer. 

ii. The thought content of the demonized and the 
psychic attitudes cannot be accounted for subjectively. 
The fact that the demons know all about the primary 
consciousness, would indicate previous co-conscious exis- 
tence, and thus would account for some of the apparent 
occultism. But even this cannot account for the knowl- 
edge of, the fear and hatred of Jesus. This is a charac- 
teristic of demonism and is manifested in some cases, 
which neither consciously nor subconsciously have ever 
received such information from human kind. 

In Dr. Wood's case, No. 101, at the mention of 
Jesus, the demonized patient immediately showed a 
change and in five minutes was normal. No. 109, on 
hearing the name, would curse Miss King. Mrs. Pax- 

*See Frontispiece. 



9 8 



DEMONISM 



ton's case, No. 118, manifested hatred of the name. No. 
4, when demonized, used to curse Mr. Meng, but after 
the latter became a Christian, the demon dared not do 
so, and would shun him. No. 58 could say anything 
except the name " Jesus." In teaching her to pray, we 
would lead her up to the words just before it, and then 
she would balk. She told me that ' it ' did not allow her 
to say it. 

In No. 143, Rev. W. H. Hudson, D.D., was walking 
along the streets of a small town, where no missionary 
lived. A demonized man, who had never seen him before, 
called out in the dialect he used, " Servant of God, what 
have you come here for ?" In the conversation following, 
Dr. Hudson gave the man a prayer, and he was healed, 
but later he was taken back into idolatrous environment. 
The hostile influences prevailed, and he died. Two of 
the cases reported by Rev. Jonathan Goforth, D. D., 
manifested strong hatred of Jesus. One of them No. 160, 
was wild, gesticulating. The eyes looked unnatural, and 
rolled around. A missionary was praying and used the 
name, "Jesus of Nazareth." Instantly the patient had a 
paroxysm of hatred, which was repeated every time the 
name was mentioned. With the other, No. 159, a IyU- 
theran missionary lady was entering a certain town. A 
woman, whom she supposed to be crazy, stopped her 
chair, crying out, "We do not want your Jesus doings 
here." She followed after the chair, making demon- 
strations until they reached the mission. There it was 
recognized as demonism and healed. 

The German case to which I have referred showed 
this same hostility. 

Miss MacNaughton, of India, sends the following 
interesting case. One day a strange woman came to the 



SATANIC DISSOCIATION 99 

hospital. Every now and then from within her would 
come the sound as of a cock crowing. Then she would 
become wild. Miss MacNaughton said to the Indian 
lady doctor, "We must kneel down and pray in the 
name of Jesus.' ' At that a different voice from within 
the woman spoke, saying, u No, that name I cannot 
take," and she was thrown down, apparently with great 
force to the ground. At the mention of the name "Jesus," 
the spirit would seem to be in a frenzy, and then suddenly 
she began to sing to a beautiful tune a most wonderful 
poem, evidently made up at the time, for one verse was 
about the hospital, but the demon said that the Name it 
could not and never would take ; that it would take the 
name of Mohammed and the names of the Hindu deities, 
but not that other name. 

I grant that there are two methods of interpreting 
this hatred and fear of the name of Jesus. The one is, 
that the secondary personality recognizes the name Jesus 
as a concept hostile to itself, merely a concept with no 
foundation in fact, and this automatically excites the 
hostility. The other interpretation is that the secondary 
personality is of an objective origin, that a morally evil 
power has by utilizing the law of suggestion brought 
about the decomposition of the personality, or maybe 
has taken advantage of a case of auto-suggestion, but in 
some way has gotten control of the subconscious self. 
The fear and hatred of Jesus on the part of the second 
personality, thus set off, comes from a morally evil 
hypnotizer, Satan, with whom it is en rapport. That 
the second is the true interpretation I maintain on the 
following grounds : 

( i ) . The regularity with which this symptom ap- 
pears. The history of hysteria and hypnotism does not 



IOO DEMONISM 

show other concepts which will iuvariably or usually 
produce fear and hatred with no ostensible reason for 
such dispositions. When the insane or the dissociated in 
other lands get abnormal emotions, fears, hatreds, these 
dispositions attach themselves to a great variety of con- 
cepts, usually such as have had some connection with 
the patient in the past. Were the fear and hatred of the 
demonized merely subjective, it would be manifested 
towards other enemy concepts, towards the idolatrous 
priests, the native exorcists, the members of the family. 

Some one will guess that it is the foreignness of the 
name Jesus which makes it the object of these emotions. 
Well then, in the whole Yencheng territory the name 
"White" is known and associated with the healing 
of these cases. If the fear were merely subjective, it 
would in some cases attach to myself rather than to the 
name Jesus. But I have never seen any indication of 
hatred towards me personally. It is always aimed directly 
at the name Jesus, and affects us only in so far as we 
represent Him. 

(2). There is nothing in the psychic life of the 
patients to account for this fear and hatred. The patients 
manifesting it have, many of them, had no possibility of 
collusion. No. 58 and No. 109 have as much inter- 
communication as the North and South Poles, while 
collusion between Chinese, Hindu and German demon- 
ism is unthinkable. 

The fear and hatred is manifested where nothing is 
known of Jesus. The ignorance in these out-of-the-way 
places is hardly credible. In using the name "Jesus,' ' 
we have to first explain whether it refers to a thing or to 
a person. As the transliteration of the u -sus" is the 
same sound as the word for book/* the Chinese usually 



SATANIC DISSOCIATION IOI 



think we are talking about "Je- M books. Even when 
they do get the idea that Jesus is a man, they think he 
is some American or Englishman. 

Take my case No. 2. In her village no one had 
ever preached Jesus. She had not the slightest concep- 
tion of what the name meant. The second personality 
had been victorious over all enemy concepts. Now a 
new enemy is presented. By analogy previous victories 
should have made the demonic personality bold and 
aggressive. Indeed it has just proved so in the interview 
with the priests. But now the woman comes into a 
prayer meeting, where the Chinese are gathered in Chi- 
nese buildings, with no suggestion of anything foreign. 
She hears the name " Jesus." The Satanic personality 
asserts itself, the demonized woman rises up in horror, 
exclaiming: " I cannot stay here. I dare not stay 
here." There is nothing in the psychic life to account 
for such a disposition. It must be suggested from else- 
where. 

No. 168 is reported by Miss S. J. Garland. It 
occurred in the far away province of Kansuh, where 
Western influence has hardly reached. A colporteur went 
for the first time into a home, in an out-of-the-way place, 
distant from any station or even out-station of the mis- 
sionaries. Laying his bag of books on the bed, he went 
out to get a dinner. In this house was a woman liable 
to demonism. She had not heard him preach and knew 
nothing of Jesus. Yet in his absence she felt tremors of 
fear and the demon in her cried out to have the bag of 
books taken away. Can we believe that a woman, in 
the most distant province of China, knowing nothing 
of the West, unable to read the Bible, and not even 
knowing that there were Bibles in the bag, could 






102 DRMONISM 



suddenly conceive such a fear of the book unless she had 
been informed and influenced by a mentality that did 
know these things, the same mentality which implants 
this fear on all under its control, whether in China, in 
Korea, in India, or in Germany ? 

(3) Nor can wejfind in the environment anything to 
account for the uniform hatred and fear of Jesus. The 
Chinese at large do not believe in Him. 

My No. 79 had been afflicted for ten years, the 
trouble beginning before her marriage. Later the hus- 
band, No. 80, and one of the children, No. 81, were liable 
to the influence. A relative, Wang Tao Ru, told them 
Jesus could heal the trouble. But a neighbor, Li Ta 
Hsiu, said he could heal it. Living a few miles away, 
he proposed to hang up scrolls, worship the demon, and 
thus attract his majesty to take up his abode with Li 
This meant sacrifice, but for it he was paid twenty 
thousand cash, a sum sufficient to support a poor family 
for months. Li's proposition was accepted even though 
it cost all this money. Yet, strange to say, it fails. Only 
brief relief is noticeable. Later, others renew Wang's 
suggestion, and the family decide to try Christianity. 
After the first failure, they would, of course, be less recep- 
tive. Yet the power of Jesus is manifested. On March 
16, 1917, No. 80 came to church well, and afterward his 
wife also was healed. This could not have been accom- 
plished by another fictitious suggestion, for there was 
nothing in the environment to make the latter suggestion 
more effective than the former one. 

Oh, but some one will say, this is easily explained, 
The conscious mind accepted Li's suggestion and the sub- 
conscious Wang's, thus inhibiting the former and making 
the latter effective. But why should the subconscious 



SATANIC DISSOCIATION IOJ 

mind accept it ? Remember that the subconscious has a 
wonderful faculty of detecting frauds. Had the name 
"Jesus' ' also been based on falsehood, we cannot doubt 
that it would have been detected. 



III. Again, supposing that auto-hypnotization could, 
on a purely subjective basis, account for the disintegrat- 
ing and the reintegrating, the cases reported of demons 
transferred from one person to another cannot be ade- 
quately accounted for without assuming an objective 
agency. 

Take my cases Nos. 3 and 25, a young wife and her 
husband. The young man's father had been both wizard 
and robber. He would have spells of demonism, chanting, 
I etc. While he lived they were not affected. After his 
death, the daughter-in-law alone* was affected. The 
symptoms were so identical with those of the old wizard 
that the community considered it his spirit troubling her, 
She was healed in the home of her Christian brother. 
Then the affection took her husband. That this was not 
merely subjective auto-hypnotization is shown by th- 
fact that of the three none were affected synchronously 
and by the coincidence of the dates. What prevented 
auto-hypnotization with the young couple all the time 
they lived with the old man? Must we postulate, on a 
purely accidental basis, positive suggestion for him and 
negative suggestion for them? And shall we also postu- 
late an accidental withdrawing of the negative suggestion 
on the death of the father and on the healing of the 
wife ? So far as we can see, had the father not died, the 
wife would not have been taken. Had she not been 
healed, her husband would not have been taken. 

*No. 3. 



104 DEMONISM 



Rev. Canon Williams gives a clear case of transfer- 
ence.* A mother had been afflicted for some years, 
occasionally having periods when she would be under 
strong control for days at a time. She would not speak 
nor take notice of any one, and had a fixed stare. At 
the end of 1918, her eldest daughter suddenly developed 
the same symptoms. Immediately the mother became :-; 
well and continued so for nine months during the whole 
period that the daughter was afflicted. The daughter C 
was taken to an asylum and spent eight months there 1 
under strong control all the time. Then she suddenly 
recovered and the mother was again taken. 

No. 75 presents further considerations. A man was 
afflicted. The house caught fire. No. 75, then normal, 
brought him out and laid him in a furrow. From that 
time the patient was healed, but No. 75 was afflicted and 
was so when our people saw him. Note that in this case 
there was no anticipatory suggestion from family history 
or otherwise. Nor was there any apparent cause for 
the healing. We might suppose that the shock of the 
fire healed the one and subjective auto-hypnotization 
caused the affliction of the other. But how account for 
the remarkable coincidence ? 

No. 124 was reported by Mrs. Anna Sykes, Rev. 
Lacy I. Moffett and Dr. Geo. C. Worth. They all knew 
the parties, the patient herself having lived with them for 
ten years after the occurrences. I asked Mr. Moffett and 
Dr. Worth whether either of them had any doubts about 
the facts. Both replied, "None at all." Dr. Worth, 
who stands high in his profession, continued: "The 
case is one well attested in every way and there can be 
no doubt about it. They were all sensible people, not 

* No. 147. 



SATANIC DISSOCIATION IO5 



neurotic, not the kind you would expect to have such an 
i| experience." This patient became afflicted. She would 
I have spells in which she would be rigid for several days. 
I The Christians, when summoned, first required them to 
put away all idolatry. There was, behind the house, a 
grove and shrine peculiarly sacred. Even these were 
removed. The patient was healed, but a relapse 
occurred when the husband brought back the idols. The 
Christians came again. They prayed. Some of them 
were stroking the patient's legs. She said : "Now he 
has my throat — now he has gone to my feet." The old 
preacher, making a dash at the demon, said, "I'll get 
him. ,, She continued, "Now he is over there in the 
corner — there he goes out of the window." As she said 
this, a young man looking in the window, cried out, "He 
has come into me," and fell down. The preacher told 
the family that if they would bring him to them, they 
could cure him, but if they took him to the priests, he 
would die. They went to the priests, and he did die a 
few days afterwards with no apparent cause. 

Here again we have a clear-cut case of transference 
and this death from suggestion recalls Boerhaave's well- 
known experiment. He got a condemned criminal and 
told him he was going to kill him at a set time. When 
the time came, he bandaged the criminal's eyes, arranged 
warm water to drip, giving the suggestion of bleeding, 
and pretended to open a vein. Death resulted. Now 
note, in this case a directing mind, with strong psychic 
influence, prepares the subject by anticipatory suggestion 
and devices of every kind, leading him up to the culmi- 
nating suggestion. If I could prove that a boy, with no 
directing mind, and no anticipatory preparation, had died 
from a sudden notion that a demon was flying in his 



106 DEMONISM 

direction, I should have outdone Boerhaave. It is a 
simpler hypothesis that in this case also there was a 
directing: mind, which was preparing the subject, and 
which gave the fatal suggestion. 

IV. There are cases in which the demonism could 
not have been caused by subjective auto-hypnotization. 
In these studies I have not drawn from the Scriptures, : 
lest I seem to be influenced by religious prejudices. 

Yet the facts in the New Testament are at least as L 
well attested as those of profane history. In these records 
the case of the demoniac and the swine is reported by 
Matthew, Mark and Luke, historians no less reliable than . 
Thucydides and Livy. Their history is accepted as 
authentic by a large part of the human race. Even those 
who oppose the religious tenets of Christianity have no 
charges to bring against the personal character of these 
historians. While there are men who doubt some of 
their statements as being scientifically impossible, yet 
their records have never been disproved in any particular 
and as to this case they were in all probability among 
the band of eyewitnesses to the incident. 

The scientific objection to this case is now much 
lessened. The probability is that animals may be hyp- 
notized. True, the passive immobility seen in Kircher's 
famous experiments with the hen and chalk line, in the 
charming of birds by serpents, etc, has been classified as 
cataplexy, as distinguished from catalepsy so common 
with hypnotism. But Myers held that animals are 
probably hypnotizable. Thompson J. Hudson in his 
popular book, M The Law of Psychic Phenomena,' 1 
thinks the methods of animal trainers are based on this 
principle. They are not unlike Braid's methods of 
hypnotizing by mechanical processes. Ernst Mangold 



SATANIC DISSOCIATION IO7 

1 wrote a book on Li Hypnotism and Catalepsy of Animals 

'compared with human Hypnosis."* 

This gives us a tenable hypothesis as to the princi- 

jples underlying the swine case. But it could not have 

J been hypnotization by auto-suggestion. Nor can we 
consider it hypnotism by Jesus. As speech was impossi- 
ble, he would have had to use the mechanical methods. 
Judging from the records and the circumstances he did 
not use them. We may then take this as a historical 
record of a case of demonism in which there must have 

J been objective hypnotizing agency. 

As confirmatory consider my No. 151. Rev. and Mrs. 

|H. J. Mason, English missionaries with years of expe- 
rience in China, have come in contact with something like 
a thousand cases. Mrs. Mason reports a case in which a 
whole family were demonized. On one occasion, the 
family dog was similarly affected and bit the patient. 
Mrs. Mason visited the family shortly afterwards, and 
the circumstances were such that she was convinced that 
the dog also was demonized. We have no opportunity 
for closer investigation, but with the New Testament 
record before us and considering the witness's reliability, 
experience and intimate knowledge, we cannot lightly 
disregard her testimony. 

As bearing on the question of demonism without 
auto-suggestion, we must consider the demonized infants. 
I have a number of such cases. The Chinese differentiate 
demonism from other diseases, and my experience is that 
the diagnosis of the native doctors in cases of demonism 
is remarkably correct. Rev. Canon Williams also reports 
an infant of two and a half years, which he believes to 
be demonized. Mark 9: 2.1 seems to be a case in point. 

*Jena, 1914. 



IOS DEMONISM 

With these infants, even though speech is wanting, 
yet there are strong indications of psychogenic demonism. 
Take No. 410. It occurred in a demonized family, and 
the symptoms, with the chameleon ways of hysteria, were 
identical with those of the other cases. There was clear 
psychogenic history. The family had been Taoist wor- 
shippers, animists, vegetarians, fearing demons and 
witches. Two sisters-in-law,* no blood kin, and a 
daughter! become dissociated. Spells occur with char- 
acteristic irregularity, in which they talk as demons. 
The physical symptoms are vomiting* purging, and 
insomnia, symptoms which suddenly cease with Nos. 345 
and 347, when healed psychically. No. 345 has a baby. 
Within three days it has spells just like those of the 
adults. The spells come and go at any time, and continue 
a year or more with no general effect on the patient's 
health. At first there is purging as with the others. 
Later it is a matter of general discomfort and fretfulness. 
After a year some fever occurs with the spells but no 
chill. Once a rash comes out, stays a day or so and 
disappears. Between spells the child is well. In its 
own home it is more inclined to the spells, and when 
away, especially in the chapel it looks jolly and well — 
takes the baptismal service as a joke gotten up for its 
amusement. In the home I felt like giving the baby a 
dose, but in the chapel I felt like saying : " That child 
is no more ill than I am." Such indications point to 
hysteria. 

What shall we make of this case ? When the mother 
was dissociated, were the physical changes — for hysteria 
has a physical side to it — such as to be transmitted to 

* Nos. 345 and 346. 

t No. 347- 





Illus. 8. Thk Dkmon taking 

CONTROL. 



Illus. 9. Convalescent. 





Illus. 10. Hopheul. Ulus. 11. Both well, 

Mother and baby saved from demonism. 

Cases 325 and 411. See pp. 14, 35. io 9- 



SATANIC DISSOCIATION IO9 

ij the infant ? We know that permanent constitutional 
\ characteristics are transmitted by heredity. A parent's 
J tastes, habits, traits of character reappear in the children 
or descendants. But that functional psychopathic con- 
| ditions are so transmitted is a more difficult proposition. 
I Sidis denies that they are hereditary.* In this case the 
J physical change in the brain and nervous system of the 
j parent were such as to be relieved by faith in Jesus. Can 
it be that she could transmit to her infant qualities not 
permanent to herself? 

Some nervous instability may have been transmitted, 
though even that is unlikely. The baby was a boy and 
thus less liable to hysteria. I saw the mother a number 
of times. Indeed I slept in the mud hut with eight people 
including Nos. 345, 347, 410, and the father. The adults 
are sunburned, work-hardened people. When her hus- 
band started to the stream to bring a cask of water, 
I weighing a hundred and fifty pounds or more, No. 345. 
remarked that she feared he could not carry it alone, 
voluntarily went, and shouldered half the load. Such a 
woman would hardly transmit neurasthenia or hysterical 
temperament to her child ! 

Nos. 323, 324, 325, 411 and an infant, not numbered, 
give an interesting series. A grandmother in old age is 
suddenly seized with hysterical pains and then convul- 
sions. She is clearly demonized, chanting and singing 
and demanding worship. She dies under it. A few days 
later a two months' old grandchild, well and hearty at 
night, in the morning is found, outside the bed cover, 
dead, with blood from nose and eyes. Four days later 
the child' sjnother (No. 325) and a sister-in-law (No. 324) 
are taken with clearly marked demonism. The demon 

* "Causation and Treatment of Psychopathic Diseases," p. i. 



HO DEMONISM 

speaking through them claims to have killed the grand-; 
mother and the baby. They are healed by Christianity. 
But No. 325 has another baby (No. 411). It is soon 
taken with what the family and friends recognize as the 
same trouble. It too is healed by Christian methods. 

Now this might be a case of epilepsy by physical 
heredity. But to support such a hypothesis we must; 
suppose the demonism transmitted to the daughters-in- 
law by psychic suggestion — they are no blood kin — and \ 
then* skipping a generation, reappearing in one or both 
infants by heredity. And the old lady's case answers 
more readily to a psychogenic than to an organic diagno- 
sis. There was no report of epileptic symptoms until she 
was about sixty years old. She lived in a neighbourhood 
where demons abounded. Our old friends, No. 58 and 
No. 72, with their numerous families of demons were 
near by. Everybody believed in and dreaded mythical i 
Foxes and Weasels — with a capital letter ! Her physical 
symptoms were just such as would occur with subcon- 
scious system organized on these weasel concepts. And 
again, other members of her family were not affected so 
long as she lived. As soon as she is dead the baby dies 
mysteriously, possibly killed by the mother though the 
indications are against that theory, or possibly dying from 
psycho-neurotic conditions induced by the demonism, e.g , 
epileptiform convulsions. Then the two young women 
are taken with the same symptoms. Later, the second 
baby is afflicted in the same way. The symptoms, the 
circumstances, the transferences point strongly to psy- 
chogenic demonism rather than epilepsy. But if so, to 
account for the transferences to infants unable to talk we 
must infer an objective influence for there could be no 
subjective auto-suggestion. As the affections belong to 



SATANIC DISSOCIATION III 

the characteristically evil species of dissociation, this 
objective influence would be Satan. 

Satanic psychic influence such as would account for 
these cases — swine, dog, babies — does not, of course, 
antagonize scientific principles. There could be no 
demonism without the environment. But the environ- 
ment could not reach them in the ordinary way by mental 
concepts, fear of demons. We must infer a source of 
suggestion, a Satan. 

We may now make certain general inductions. 

(i) Independently of the question of revelation, 
facts indicate that there must be a Satan, an original 
source of evil in the world, aud the ultimate source of 
what we may now call Satanic Dissociation. 

(2) The hypothesis that this Satan may influence 
human beings by volitional suggestion, and control dis- 
sociated personalities, does not contradict science. 

(3) This hypothesis is borne out by the facts of 
demonism. 



CHAPTER IX 
DEMONS AND SPIRITS OF THE DEAD. 

Since, then, there is a Satan, the original source of 
demonism, and since the dissociated personalities of the 
demonized are under the control of Satan, operating by 
the law of suggestion, how does Satan exercise this 
control, directly or through emissaries? Is it Satan 
or a Satanic demon which controls the demonized ? 

I. On this particular point it is necessary to con- 
sider the teachings of the Scriptures. Not to seek proof 
of my position; for the object of this book is to prove 
the Scriptures by the facts, not to prove the facts by the 
Scriptures. But those of us whose life-time views have 
been formed on the Scripture basis, must first clear our 
path, before we can get an unobstructed view of this 
problem. 

The Bible teaches that there is a Satan, and that 
there are Satanic demons. But does the Bible teach that 
demons or the spirits of the dead can communicate with 
the living? On this point it is not so fully committed I 
as we may have thought. 

This problem depends largely on the mode of com- 
munication between Satan and men. 

The Bible constantly speaks of Satan tempting men, 
with no hint of intermediate agencies and in language 
that seems to imply direct communication. Satan 
"tempted" 1 Jesus, " entered into " 2 Judas, "as a roaring 
lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour." 3 
He plants the tares, 4 snatches away the seed, 5 " blinds 
the minds of the unbelieving." 6 We are told, " Do not 
give place to the Devil," 7 "resist the Devil," 8 " stand 



J Mt. 4etal. 2 Lu. 22 et al. 3 iPet. 5: 8. 4 Mt. 13: 39. 
5 Mt. 13: 19. 6 2Cor. 4: 4. 7 Epb. 4: 27. 8 Jas. 4: 7. 






DEMONS AND SPIRITS OF THE DEAD. 113 

against the wiles of the Devil." 9 John writes to the 
young men because they have overcome the evil one 10 ; 
we pray to be kept from the evil one 11 ; the L,ord guards 
us from the evil one. 12 

The wicked are said to be of their father the Devil. 13 
Cain was of the evil one. 14 Paul wrote of the law of 
sin working in our members, 15 of our fulfilling the desires 
of the flesh and of the mind. 16 The tenor of the Scriptures 
seems to be that Satan is a spirit, limited neither by time 
nor by space, who has implanted an evil nature in man, 
and who can communicate directly with men, having no 
need of intermediaries. The passages which teach that 
demons communicate with men might, with cause suffi- 
cient, be treated as anthropomorphic or merely figurative. 

Those, therefore, who think this to be the true 
interpretation can leave the demons out of the case and 
consider the demonized as dissociated personalities con- 
trolled by Satan, just as we have been accustomed to think 
of a murderer being influenced by him. 

On the other hand, at least two passages do teach 
that demons tempt men in normal life. In Eph. 6:12 we 
are said to wrestle " against the principalities, against the 
powers, against the world rulers of this darkness, against 
spiritual wickedness in high places." Again in Rev. 16: 14 
we read of Kl spirits of demons," working signs, going 
forth to draw the kings of the earth to battle against God.* 

With regard to the Bible teachings on this subject, 
the "International Standard Bible Encyclopedia' ' (Orr) 
notes that the Old Testament never speaks of the demon- 
ized — God taught the Jews to hate idolatry and all 

•Eph. 6:11. 10 ijno. 2: 13, n Mt. 6: 13. 12 2Thess. 3: 3. 

13 Jno. 8: 44. 14 iJno. 3: 12. 35 Rom. 7 and 8. 16 Kph. 2: 3, 
*Cf. also 1 Kgs. 22: 19-23. 



114 DEMONISM 

connected with it — and that the New Testament does not 
discuss the demons. Jesus unquestionably refers them to 
Satan,* but he had nothing to say about the rabbinical 
discussions as to whether they were spirits of the dead, 
fallen angels, or what. He does in some cases speak of 
the demon as being an entity other than the patient and 
not Satan. In IyU. 10:20 he says, (i In this rejoice not, 
that the spirits are subject unto you." In Mt. 12:43 
and IyU. 11 : 24 he speaks of the demon, cast out, going 
through "waterless places/' seeking rest, and bringing 
back seven other spirits into the patient. In L,u. 8 : 31 
the demon showed fear of "the abyss/' and that whole 
narrative seems to put Jesus' imprimatur on the concep- 
tion of the demon as an individual entity. f 

To take the view that Satanic suggestion, with the 
demonized and perhaps with the normal, comes through 
subsidiary spirits, gives a more literal interpretation of the 
Scriptures and confirms the thought of saints and poets, 
who themselves rose above crude superstitions. 

The distinction between these two conceptions may 
be illustrated thus. Direct communication, with no 
intermediaries, the theory which I have suggested as 
possible, would be like a vast telephonic system, wireless 
if you please, Satan himself communicating with, influenc- 
ing, giving suggestions to men and in this way causing 
demonism. The second theory would make communica- 
tion between Satan and men more like that, for instance, 
between the President and the people of the United 
States. It is not necessary for everybody to see him or 
speak to him. One may write a letter, drop it in the 
box. It reaches the President's office and is answered 
according to his wishes, yet he may not see it. On this 

* L,u. 10: 17, 18. 

t Cf. also Mt. 12: 25 ff. et al. 



DEMONS AND SPIRITS OF THE DEAD. 115 

theory, both God and Satan are the centers of vast 
systems of personalities, radiating everywhere, systems 
in which subsidiaries do the will of their executives. 

II. The study of demonism gives ground for believ- 
ing that this latter is the correct view. 

(1) Aside from Scripture we know enough about 
Satan to justify the belief that HE must have personal- 
ity— and the same could be said of God. 

The distinction between a Satan conceived of as an 
impersonal force or principle and a personal Devil, is, to 
some extent, that between the simple and the complex, 
the systematized. In the human organism disorganized 
sensations, reactions, ideas, memories are not personalities, 
but when co-ordinated into a system exercising the higher 
functions of purpose, thought, reason, then they become 
a personality, able to frame the "ego," to say "I/- So 
in the spiritual world, an organism, in which forces and 
principles operate, and which, on the other hand, can 
manipulate scientific principles to its own ends, must be 
a personality. 

Forces and principles do not have personality. When 
one presses the button, he does not have to ask the elec- 
tricity whether he may turn on the light. When one falls 
out of a tree, gravitation does not consider whether he is 
to fall or fly. The life principle cannot decide whether 
one is to live or die. Forces and principles are mechani- 
cal, dead. 

What we must infer as to Satan — that he is one who 
resists God, who puts the evil nature in man, who tempts 
man, who can manipulate natural law — would be impos- 
sible except in a personality. It implies mental powers 
and the manipulating of scientific principles rather than 
dead mechanism. 



Il6 DEMONISM 

Recognizing this fact, it would be banal to believe in 
a single evil personality. Shall we postulate myriads of 
human, but only two non-human personalities, God and 
Satan? Personality on the part of Satan implies the 
existence of subsidiary, evil personalities, i.e., Satanic 
demons, even though there were no Scripture on the 
subject. Satan would be lonely indeed if he had no 
company. 

Since, then, there are demons, and since we saw in 
Chaps. VII and VIII that demonism is from Satan, the 
inference would be that demons are the medium of 
communication. 

(2) A second argument may be based on THE 
PERSONAL QUALITIES OF THE DEMONS, 
ESPECIALLY AS MANIFESTED IN CASES OF 
TRANSFERENCE. 

Do not mistake me. I am not arguing that the 
qualities of personality manifested in demonism prove 
demonic origin. If I did so, some would at once fling 
Sally and Twoey and Leonie and Ivenes at me. They 
had personality but were not demons. The proofs of 
Satanic control in demonism have already been given in 
previous chapters. The question now is as to distinctions 
of personality, not in the demonized humans, but in the 
hypnotizing agent, Satan. 

The influences, the controls which dominate the 
demonized have differing dispositions, faculties, desires ; 
they come and they go ; recognized in A, they reappear 
in B and C. 

We saw in Chap. VIII that cases of transference 
necessarily imply an objective agency. Mere auto-sug- 
gestion might account for a "new" demon taking its 
traits from an "old" one, but could not account for the 



DEMONS AND SPIRITS OF THE DEAD. 117 

demon leaving the original case, nor for the remarkable 
coincidences manifested. 

Now, what is it that is transferred? We have seen 
that a demon is the evil part of a man's nature dissociated 
by and under the power of Satan. Is it this dissociated 
personality which is transferred? We must reject this 
for two reasons. 

(a) When the transference takes place, the patient 
is reintegrated, the first and second personalities reuniting. 
There is now no dissociated personality to " migrate." 
{6) To maintain that a Sail} 7 or a Twoey, e.g., could 
enter the personalities of others than Miss Beaucbamp 
and Alma Z., would mean that living beings could 
become demons — a proposition I, for one, should not like 
to undertake. 

It is not a transference of the dissociated personality, 
but of the hypnotizing agent. Now we have seen that 
Satan is the hypnotizer in demonism. What is trans- 
ferred must, then, be either the one great Satan personality , 
or a representative of him — an emanation, capable of 
exercising his powers. But the controls, all exhibiting 
the Satanic hatred and fear of Jesus, each have their own 
desires, purposes, thoughts, and are readily distinguished 
from one another. To see this, I will narrate a few cases. 

No. 153 I clip from "The Watchman Magazine. " 
This was a woman in Korea, thirty-five years of age. A 
year previous to this occurrence she had been taken with 
a fear, and began to wander about the hills. When she 
would lie down, the whole body would writhe. She 
went to the Christians. When they worshipped, she 
made all manner of noises. An open Bible was placed 
on her head from behind. She snatched it away, saying 
she was afraid of it. Then a hymn book was placed 



Il8 DEMONISM 

there, but she laughed, saying it could not hurt her. 
All this was in spite of the fact that she could not read. 
When the Christians prayed, the demon asked, " Where 
will you send us?" — for it claimed to be five in number. 
The leader said it might go wherever it pleased. Then 
the demon begged to be allowed to enter another person. 
The Christians refused and prayed harder. At last the 
demon said that in three days it would leave the woman 
and go to a certain creek. On the third day she was 
taken with violent crying and wallowed on the ground. 
When she ceased to cry, she was normal, and ever since 
has been a happy Christian. 

No. 149, from New Zealand, I have related in Chap- 
ter I. After eight or nine demons had been exorcised, 
the last and strongest control, which spoke English though 
the patient knew only Maori, refused to come out. When 
finally yielding, this spirit begged to be allowed to enter 
an afflicted child there present, and on being refused 
threatened to injure the body of the patient, mentioning 
four possible ways of doing so. Finding no recourse, 
the spirit threw her off the seat into the middle of the 
room, where she was suspended by levitation at an angle 
of forty-five degrees for quite half a minute and then fell 
in collapse. Thereafter she was entirely free. 

Miss A. Mildred Cable, in her " The Fulfilment of 
a Dream," gives this incident. 

A demon driven from a man who had become a 
Christian, went to a village eight miles distant and took 
control of a young woman. Speaking through her, it 
forbade hergmarriage and manifested itself in the same 
manner as it had done in the man from whom it came, 
compelling her to rub one side of her face and head until 
there was no hair left. When questioned as to whence 



DEMONS AND SPIRITS OF THE DEAD. 119 

it came, the demon replied by giving the name of this man. 
To the query * why have you left him? ' the reply was ' I 
have been turned out, for that man has become a Chris- 
tian/ 

Compare also another of her cases. A daughter was 
married off, and was ill-treated in the husband's home. 
Finally she was poisoned. Of course none of her own 
family were present. A few days later, one of them, a 
strong young first cousin, while working in the fields, 
was seized with trembling and weeping. He said, "I 
am Lotus Bud : I was cruelly done to death. Why is 
there no redress ?" The family gave reasons for their 
course, promising to do what the spirit wished. In an 
hour the spell passed off. 

In all these cases the demon has the marks of an 
organized personality, distinguishable from Satan and 
from other demons. 

3. A third argument I would base on the fact that 
demons either cannot, or at least ordinarily do not 

CONTROL TWO PERSONS AT THE SAME TIME. This 

cannot be said of the Satan personality, who operates in 
all the world simultaneously. 

While I would not deny that there may be cases of 
the same spirit controlling two persons at once, yet I 
have never seen one. The universal testimony, so far 
as I know, of Chinese and Western observers, is that they 
do not. Even when report comes that a whole family is 
controlled by a spirit, I find on inquiry that it alternates 
from one to another. As No. 358 remarked in describing 
his case, ' when one of the family gets well, another is 
taken.' No. 459, with no leading questions on my part, 
said that when he would recover from a spell, it would 
take his wife, and when she recovered, it would go to one 



120 DEMONISM 



of the children. This point comes out clearly in a case 
reported by a lady who is now Mrs. W. E. Comerford. 

This No. 174 occurred eight or nine years ago in a | 
village sixty li from Pingtu, Shantung Province, China. 
While this lady was conducting a meeting, an old woman 
came up, looked intently at her, and challenged the 
statement that there is a Devil, demanding that the 
missionary retract it. Seeing her threatening attitude, 
other women seized her, and then she broke into raving, 
tearing clothes, and scratching herself till she bled. I 
Mrs. Comerford, at the instance of others, prayed for 
her, but saw no results. Later she recovered. 

During this first rencontre there was present a young 
woman who was in the missionary's Bible class. She 
dashed under the benches, and afterwards said that from 
a child she had been afraid of this old woman, although 
she lived in the other end of the town. Shortly after the 
old woman's recovery, the young one was taken. The 
evangelist and others went and held worship with her. 
She was lying on the brick bed, raving and tearing her- 
self like the old one did. The demon said, " Put them all 
out." She, in a different voice, would reply, "No, you 
go." Presently she had a convulsion. When it passed, 
she lay with a fixed stare, and presently fell asleep. 
After about three hours she waked normal. But now the 
old woman, in another part of the village, not knowing what 
had occurred, was herself again suddenly seized. Mrs. 
Comerford saw her, both after the first healing and during 
this second period. It was now autumn, and the mission- 
aries wished to baptize the young woman. But circum- 
stances prevented. In the spring a class was arranged for 
at a town eight li away. A Bible-woman went for this 
young woman and other inquirers. On the way she began 



DEMONS AND SPIRITS OF THE DEAD. 121 

to show fear. Time and again the Christians urged her 
to go on. At last she turned and ran home, raving and 
tearing herself. As soon as this occurred, the old woman 
again recovered ; and so far as reports go, they remain in 
these respective conditions to the present time. If a 
missionary or Bible- woman goes near the young woman, 
she runs in and shuts the door, but the old woman is 
normal. The passages of the demon back and forth are 
clearly marked and it is evident that the two cannot be 
under control at the same time. 

Seeing, then, that there must be personality, both 
for Satan and for demons ; that the controls which are 
transferred cannot be dissociated personalities, and are 
clearly distinguished from Satan and from one another ; 
and that the demons do not control two persons at once ; 
we would conclude that Satan's control of the demonized 
is through the medium of subsidiaries. 

III. If, then, Satan works through subsidiary de- 
mons, can it be that he utilizes the spirits of the dead in 
this way? Was " Lotus Bud " the girl herself or a spirit 
impersonating her? 

Bible students have long puzzled over Samuel's return 
and the revelation of Moses and Elijah on the Mount of 
Transfiguration. The Societies for Psychic Research 
hold that personalities persist after death and can com- 
municate with men. They have a mass of data, much 
of which has not been refuted. 

For example, J. H. Hyslop, for many years the 
leading spirit of the American Society for Psychic 
Research, told me before his death that he, a professor 
in Columbia University, and an unbeliever in spiritual 
matters, was convinced on this subject by the following 
case. One Frederick I,. Thompson, a goldsmith and 



122 DEMONISM 

engraver, with only crude ideas of painting, suddenly 
felt compelled to drop his work and go to painting. H^ 
had formerly h ad a mere speaking acquaintance with Re 
Swain Gifford. Now he felt that he himself was Gifford, 
He did not know until later that the latter had died six 
months before. His paintings showed art, and sold. 
One purchaser, James B. Townsend, not knowing his 
story, remarked that his work looked like Gilford's. 
Thompson became conscious of scenes and pictures which) 
later proved to have been favorites of the painter. One 
scene of certain gnarled oaks which continually beset 
him, on being worked out, proved to have been known, 
and painted by Gifford, and through mediums the loca- 
tion was discovered on a far-away spot never seen by 
Thompson. Having let Hyslop lock up some of his 
sketches, Thompson visited Gifford's studio — for the, 
first time. It was just as the painter had left it and 
Thompson's breath was almost taken away to find on an 
easel an unfinished sketch exactly identical with one of 
those Hyslop had locked up. 

In view of such cases, it is difficult to deny absolutely 
the possibility of communication, under some circumstan- 
ces, between the dead and the living, and we shall watch 
with interest the investigations of these societies. But it 
is a safer proposition that for the spirits of the dead to 
communicate with the living, if possible, is a violation of; 
natural law and of the conditions of their existence. 

We saw in Chapter III that the demon which speaks 
is really the dissociated part of the man himself, the "old 
man," the " flesh. " Whatever the demons be that 
influence these dissociated personalities, giving color to 
their thoughts and acts, they cannot be the foxes and 
weasels and pigs that the demons often represent them- 



DEMONS AND SPIRITS OF THE DEAD. 133 

selves to be. By the same token we must discredit those 
which claim to be spirits of the dead. These chameleon 
ways indicate unreality. 

Again, that there are principles applying which 
prevent intercourse between the dead and the living is 
evidenced by the fact that ordinarily they do not com- 
municate, and that what formerly was believed to be 
communication is now generally recognized as mere 
superstition. 

Race psychology has had such a recoil from the old 
view that spirits of the dead live all about us and catch 
us when they can, that the whole subject is in disrepute. 
As things now stand, a modern mind, coming in contact 
with a personality dissociated on morally evil lines, finds 
it easier to believe, not that a grandfather's ghost has 
got the man, but that Satan controls the personality by 
suggestion, whether directly or through a subsidiary 
demon. But even Satan is not able to * 'possess' ' men 
ad libitum. All is under law, under scientific principles. 
And nature's law says that men cannot be demonized 
except in places and under environment where men wor- 
ship and fear demons. 



CHAPTER X. 

TREATMENT OF DEMONISM. 

Now that we know what demonism is, how is it to 
be cured, by science or by miracles? I say unquestion- 
ably that both principles are involved. 

I. Misunderstanding of the term miracle is re- 
sponsible for much of the conflict between science and 
religion. The crude conception of a miracle would 
demand that the healing be not only directly by God, 
but " immediate/' excluding all means to an end. This 
view is justified neither by reason nor by Scripture. 
The most direct healing may yet be based on scientific 
principles. 

Edersheim had this in mind, when he wrote : " The 
objection to miracles, as such, proceeds on that false 
Supra-naturalism, which traces a Miracle to the im- 
mediate fiat of the Almighty without any intervening, 
links; and as already shown, it involves a vicious petitio 
principii. ' ' * 

A miracle is not necessarily, if ever, in violation of ; 
scientific principles. Science is knowledge of the laws of 
God, for there can be no law that is not of God. He 
does not deny Himself. God can make water go up a 
hill, but He would not make the law of gravitation take 
it up. That would indeed be a violation of one of His 
principles. He may suspend His laws, or use laws of 
which we are ignorant. We are learning more and more 
of the laws of God. Who would have thought a few 
years since that the human mind could cause paralysis, 
levitation, blindness, without the use of physical means? 
Some writers even claim that the human libido has 



* Edersheim, " The Life and Times of the Messiah," Vol. II, 
626. 



TREATMENT OF DEMONISM 125 

creative powers. God, who made all these laws, knows 
and controls them as man never can. The day may come 
when we can prove demonstrably that mind, the Divine 
mind, can create. 

From this point of view we may define a miracle 
thus : 

A Miracle is an Over-ruling of the Works 
of God in the Ordinary Course of Nature in 
Order to an Extraordinary, a Supernatural 
Manifestation of the Divine Volition in Response 
to an Appeal or a Definite Need. 

With this view in mind, we can readily accept the 
scientific view that the flood was caused by a sudden 
elevation of the ocean bed, due to pressure of the ice-cap 
that covered Europe and America.* That God was be- 
hind the matter was evidenced by Noah's history. 

As to the crossing of the Red Sea, we are told that 
it was a " strong east wind "f which, possibly at the ebb 
tide, swept a passage across the silted up mouth of the 
channel, leaving the waters on either side as a wall to the 
enemy — water does not have to stand up seven feet high 
to be a wall. But we must, with the Bible, hold that God 
sent that wind. And Moses would not have been such a 
fool as to bring that host into a culde sac. He was guided 
by the Divine Strategist. God timed the flight, timed the 
pursuit, timed the wind, and when the moment came, 
told Moses to sound the advance and smite the water. 

God does not disdain to use means, even so unique 
as the ravens to feed Elijah. 



* A readable presentation of this subject by Prof. H. W. 
Magouri, Ph.D., of Cambridge, Mass., U.S.A., is given in "The 
Bible Champion," published at Reading, Perm., U.S.A., Vol. 27, 
February to July, 1921. 

fEx. 14: 21. 



126 DEMONISM 

The miracles not yet understood — Jonah's experi- 
ence, the virgin birth, the resurrection, the ascension — 
self-sufficient science complacently rejects, self-sufficient 
religion complacently accepts. The dynamic spirit of 
the truth does not refuse to believe what it cannot under- 
stand, but merely asks: Is there reliable testimony? Are 
the events such as would imply purposive Divine influ- 
ence ? and then works toward a comprehension of the 
methods of the Divine. 

I maintain — and challenge contradiction — that to 
conceive of Jesus Christ as comprehending and con- 
trolling what we call science so thoroughly as to be 
able, not only to use its principles for the healing of 
the demonized, but also to establish a system which 
would in the hands of unscientific men overcome the 
power of Satan and rid the world of demonism, is an . 
incalculably higher conception of the miracle idea than 
to hold merely that he had a fiat authority to order a 
demon out. This shows, independently of revelation, 
that the knowledge and power of Jesus were super 
natural. 

II. Holding in mind this view of the miracle, let us 
now study the treatment of demonism. We have found 
that the demon is the patient's wicked self, dissociated 
by the power of Satan and under his control. How shall 
we set about healing a case of demonism? The first 
thought is to tell the patient that it is not a demon that 
has control of him. But how far would you get on this 
line ? The patient, even in the normal periods, would 
not be able to comprehend nor believe what you say. He 
knows that it is a demon, or thinks he does. The 
"Dictionary of Psychological Medicine" notes in con-' 
nection with the Morzinnes epidemic that " nothing 



TREATMENT OF DEMONISM 127 

caused an attack so surely as the assertion that the con- 
vulsionnaires were not possessed.' ' 

Indeed, it is a demon ; maybe not in the cuckoo- 
parasite sense, as formerly conceived ; certainly not the 
weasel or fox demon, as the patient thinks : but a second- 
ary personality controlled by Satan or by a Satanic spirit 
is a demon. It is not the patient himself. Investigators 
treat secondary personalities as real. They find it worse 
than useless to try to talk to one personality when another 
has control. Prince found himself puzzled and hindered 
when he thought he was talking to " The Saint,' ' until 
he found that it was a personality he had not recognized, 
the one who later came to be known as "The Realist. 
Scientists adopt names for these personalities, addressing 
them as Sally, L,eonie, Margaret. Frequently the per- 
sonalities choose their own names or express a pre- 
ference. 

The scientific study of dissociation is still in a forma- 
tive state. In the cases studied, many of them arising out 
of pathological or psychopathological conditions, analysis 
has been the most difficult problem. With from two to 
half a dozen personalities, the first problem was to find 
the original. Even in dual personality it has sometimes 
been found that what had been supposed to be the normal 
was not so. 

In demonism there are usually two clear-cut per- 
sonalities and analysis is simple. The Satanic personality 
often conceives itself as multiple when not so. Thus No. 
58 claimed to be a hundred and twenty-five demons, later 
reduced to five. The "legion" case of the New Testa- 
ment seems to be similar. But there are cases of multiple 
demonism. The Magdalene is one. Among our New 
Zealand cases, Nos, 148 and 149 are clearly defined, 



128 DEMONISM 

and so also is No. 167 from Kansuh Province, China, 
reported by Miss S. J. Garland. 

In the treatment of the cases studied by scientists 
two objects are aimed at. (1) The personalities must 
be reintegrated. The unity, the co-ordination prevailing 
in the normal personality must be restored. (2) There 
is the "squeezing/ ■ the getting rid of personalities such 
as were not parts of the original integer. The Sallies, 
the Margarets, the demons are not parts of the original 
whole, but what Prince calls hypnotic artifacts. Some 
of their powers and characteristics are parts of the origi- 
nal, but others are superadded by suggestion, by educative 
processes and experiences after the personalities were 
formed. 

Both of these processes depend upon the general 
principle underlying all reintegrating of personalities, the 
subduing of the subconscious mind by the conscious. 
Functions permanent to the integrated personality again 
take their place. Functions extraneous or temporary are 
obliterated. Whether such obliterated qualities may be 
retained in the subconscious is a question on which we 
need not speculate. 

This re-establishing of the authority of the con- 
scious mind, in some of the cases studied by scientists, 
has resulted automatically, i.e., from unknown causes, 
shocks, etc. 

In treating the cases science has followed chiefly 
two lines. (1) Neuro-psychic stimulus. The primary 
is invoked, interchange of personalities is encouraged. 
In the case of Mr. Hanna, Sidis brought him out of the 
dull routine of the country town to a stimulating experi- 
ence in New York, not shocking him with new experiences, 
but putting him among places and people with whom his 



TREATMENT OF DEMONISM 139 

former life had been associated and intensifying the 
stimulus by a gay crowd in a restaurant, with music aad 
jokes. He also used drugs — cannabis India, coffee — 
with mechanical stimulus — cold water, motion, etc. 

But science finds, what our experience confirms, that 
(2) suggestion is the chief reliance in handling dissocia- 
tion. In most of the cases healed by science hypnotism 
has been used. The Paris and Nancy Schools both used 
it. J. and P. Janet healed Marcelline and Blanche W. 
with it. At Morzinnes M. Constans found it effective. 

With Miss B., Prince found that what had appeared 
to be a distinct personality, B II, was the original 
hypnotized, and that this B II was a combination of the 
"Saint" and "The Realist." What could be simpler 
than to unite them under hypnosis, and then reawake 
the united personality ? But here a difficulty arose. 
"Sally" had herself learned hypnotic methods, and, 
resenting the prospect of extinction, interfered with 
Prince's efforts. When he got rid of Sally, then he 
reintegrated Miss B. by hypnotism. 

Sidis prefers to use what he calls hypnoidization — a 
method not hypnotism, but also based on suggestion. 
The patient does not come into the hypnotic state, the 
normal consciousness does not give way to the subcon- 
scious. The patient is told to lie down and relax. 
Quiet, monotony, subdued singing and reading induce a 
dreamy state, in which the subconscious may be com- 
municated with by discreet hints or questions. By this 
method exploratory work, analysis, psychic treatment is 
done. 

III. As to the treatment of demonism, for the first 
twenty years of my life in China, I was, like others, 
sceptical on the whole subject, and so cases were not 



130 DEMONISM 

often brought to me. Family skeletons usually prefer 
closets. But an old colporteur, Tai Shi* Rung, having 
simple faith in the Bible, when he came in touch with 
the demonized, began to pray over and heal them. We 
could not but follow suit. Of the more than three 
hundred cases we have met the larger part have been 
healed. Other missionaries report similar experiences. 

A striking case of healing was that of No. 7. For 
three years his trade as carpenter hsd been laid aside. A 
demon afflicted him, telling him, as he afterwards reported 
to me, " You are suffering. Do you not know how to 
die?' To prevent suicide, his wife took away his belt 
and ankle-bands, cut off his queue, and watched him. 
In 1916 two of his neighbors became Christians. They 
prayed with him, and he was healed. The healing 
occupied in all thirteen days. I saw him a few weeks 
later, smiling, well, and have often seen him in these 
years since the healing.* 

My No. 6, the wife of a carpenter, was desperately 
ill. The trouble began in the fourth month, 1915. She 
had been a widow of rather better social standiug than 
he. Hence arose worry about the marriage. There 
seems also to have been female trouble. Spells of de- 
monism would come on, usually at night, and last till 
daybreak. She would have pain. The speech would 
become thick and confused, the sight blurred. She 
could not eat. In the seventh month diarrhea set in. 
By the eighth month— late August, early September- 
she was bedridden, emaciated, sallow. 

The husband went fifteen miles for Elder Chen 
Ya Koh. He replied that he was coming to their village 
in three or four days for the Sunday, and would see her 
then. The husband insisted that she would not hold out 



*Illus. 12. 




Illus. 12. Saved from Suicide. Case 7. See p. 130, 



TREATMENT OF DEMONISM 131 

so long. Mr. Chen said: "Well, I will come right 
on." The next day, the husband met him, saying: 
"It is all right now. The demon said, 'I am going,' 
and she has gotten well." When I saw her on December 
31st of that year, she was ruddy, smiling, happy, well, 
and has been so for several years since. 

In April 1920, a man, No. 408, was brought on a 
boat to the chapel at the K'wai village. He had been 
abed twenty-six days, and for twenty odd had not been 
able to eat. His head hurt, waist hurt, legs hurt, the 
pains changing from one place to another and having no 
assignable cause. He was evidently on the point of 
death. When the boat reached the chapel, the Christians 
helped him inside. The church service was held. At 
the close the Christians told him he could walk, and he 
immediately did so. He walked to the boat, ate food, 
and on the way home even prepared his own food. 

No. 124 continued well and intimate with the 
missionaries until her death ten or twelve years after the 
occurrence. 

Miss Margaret King reports No. in. She was 
afflicted, and under the influence made away with 
several of her own children. She, too, since becoming a 
Christian more than fifteen years ago, has continued well 
and raised her family. 

The cases of multiple demonism are also healed, 
and in the same way. Canon Williams' case, No. 148, 
was a bright girl in the mission school. Her teachers 
often noted in her another personality, but thought 
she was acting it. On coming up for confirmation a 
third personality came forward, which would answer 
41 No" to all questions. She was not confirmed. Later 
on, during a mission she asked for prayer that she 



I32 DEMONISM 

might "be able to believe in Jesus again." • On being 
questioned, the same control manifested itself. Finally 
she was asked a question to which the characteristic "no" 
could not be answered. She was seized with a violent 
convulsion, becoming absolutely rigid. A few minutes 
were occupied by the friends in prayer and exorcizing 
the demon in the name of Jesus. She was set completely 
free. She has since testified that she was conscious of 
the spirits, and that one of them would not let her believe 
in Jesus. 

The cases of demonism, simple or multiple, which 
have not been healed, were generally those which did 
not get a grasp of Christian principles and faith in Jesus 
Christ. Some cases may have been lost from phj^sical 
complications which had become permanent. 

In treating demonism, medication should be used 
for what it is worth. Attendant or excitatory maladies 
being relieved, the patient is better able to master the 
psychic trouble. Furthermore, confidence in the practi- 
tioner may have a psychic effect. My first-aid box is so 
well known that I am called on for " demon pills M on all 
occasions. 

Except for the dangers of amateurism, I would use 
psychotherapeutic methods where indicated. Indeed, 
with No. 435 I did risk hypuotization, taking care to 
give the contra-suggestion before putting her to sleep. 
When she was in one of her tantrums, I suddenly 
remembered how Barker in the Johns Hopkins Hospital 
one day handled a hysteric. My nurse — for I was 
myself a patient at that time — told me of it with glee. 
So with this in mind, I told No. 435 that she would go 
to sleep and presently wake up with the demon gone. 
Then in the name of Jesus I ordered her to go to sleep. 



TREATMENT OF DEMONISM 1 33 

She was standing close to the pulpit. Directly she 
began to look drowsy. I had the seats removed and 
gently let her down on the platform. Taking up my 
sermon where the demon had interrupted me, I was 
trying to gather up the threads of the discourse, when 
she rolled over, calling in the most natural way, (t Mother, 
Mother,' ' and rose up normal. 

But with demonism psychotherapeutic methods alone 
are not adequate. With No. 476, I again tried 
Barker's method. The case had every indication of 
being simple demonic hysteria. The womau, fifty or 
sixty years of age, had been afflicted only a month or so. 
She was abed, the chief symptoms being the variable 
hysteric pains and fright. There was no fever, nor were 
there rheumatic or other pathological symptoms. The 
witch had told her she would certainly die with it. The 
face was wild with terror, and the pulse racing. During 
the interview, she several times rose up with an expres- 
sion on her face which looked almost as if the demon 
had taken control, but as she spoke only in the normal 
personality I did not address myself to the demon. I was 
confident that we could heal it, working on the normal per- 
sonality by contra-suggestion. We took away the idols, 
told the family to believe in Jesus, prayed with them, and 
attempted to put her to sleep. That my methods were 
correct, so far as they went, was evident because at once 
the pulse slowed down, she yawned and became drowsy. 
But she did not succumb, and presently, at her request we 
withdrew, thinking she would fall asleep when the room 
got quiet. As we left, a worker, experienced with demon- 
ism, remarked, " You did not frighten him. He will not 
go unless you scare him." She did not sleep, any to 
speak of, nor has she recovered. On thinking back, I 



134 DEMONISM 

see that with No. 435 the hypnotization was successful 
after we had been working several days directly on the 
demon. In this case I failed to bring the name " Jesus v 
to bear on the demon, and this explains the failure. 
We have seen that the demons fear Jesus. With 
Dr. Wood's case the mere mention of the name relieved 
the trouble at once. Ordinarily, I do not hesitate to 
order the demons in the name of Jesus to come out. 
In all our dealings with the trouble, we seek by prayer 
to become ourselves filled with faith in Jesus and to com- 
municate this faith to the demonized. 

In doing so we are working on scientific principles. 
We endeavor (1) To educate in Christian principles; (2) 
To develop Christian habits ; (3) To produce and intensify 
the conviction that Jesus can heal. Thus, scientifically 
considered, the consciousness, the primary personality, is 
by suggestion and stimulus enabled to overcome the sub- 
conscious, Satanic personality, .... for it is thus that 
the power of the Son of God works. 

All association with and reliance upon idolatry must 
be broken off. A distinct advance is made when the 
nose-ring is taken off, and the vegetarian vows broken. 
They are links with the old superstitious life. A Chris- 
tian parent, brother, or husband, means much to the case. 
A little prayer, even though not understood, is a habit- 
former, not to speak of the deeper significance of it. It 
was pathetic to hear the conglomeration of prayer and 
hymn that ignorant No. 2 used. i( Jesus save my heart 
and life. Jesus save my life. Jesus loves me, I love 
Jesus. Jesus, pity me a sinner. Thank — thank — a 
sinner.* ' 

Coming to church is most important. It draws out 
the will power and strengthens faith. In the case of 



TREATMENT OF DEMONISM 1 35 

No. 2, as soon as a spell came on, the Christians would 
hurry her into the chapel. When visiting a patient at 
the home, our workers would sometimes take a group of 
schoolboys along to sing. With No. i, a motto was 
pasted over the bed : " Jesus saves me." With No. 33, 
to overcome the aboulia about eating, Mr. Tai assured 
the family that if he handed bread to the patient, the 
demon could not interfere. She took it, ate, and soon 
recovered. 

An essential of success is confidence on the part of 
the operator. This is in line with the principle brought 
out by Sidis* that with normal persons, the critical 
faculties have to be evaded by indirect suggestion, but 
that with a subject under hypnotism, being already in 
a condition of abnormal suggestibility, direct suggestion: 
should be used. The voice of the operator should 
be authoritative, commanding. A timid, doubtful 
manner is not effective. Hence the success of the 
simple-minded Christians. They are not troubled by 
doubts and queries, as the missionary is, unless he has 
studied the matter out to a clear conviction. In the 
long run his conviction, based on intelligence, is more 
stable than their unenlightened faith. 

IV. A word as to non-Christian exorcisms. They 
owe what apparent success they may seem to have to the 
misuse of this principle of suggestion. To tell a patient 
with convincing assurance that the demon will relieve 
the pain on condition of the burning of so much incense 
does give temporary relief, but at the price of intensify- 
ing the thralldom. The supposed case of tetanus (No. 
108) was so relieved. So also with No. 109 the paralysis 



* " Psychology of Suggestion." 



136 DEMONISM 

passed off, but afterwards the patient testified to being 
utterly wretched in bondage. When finally healed by 
Christianity, she became normal — and free. 

Efforts to frighten, force, or tempt the demon to 
leave are, of course, futile. With No. 73 they fired a 
gun to frighten the fox away. With No. 58 they placed 
the poor woman in a cesspool up to the neck for a long 
time. With Nos. 79, 80, and 81, the exorcist tried to 
entice the demon to his own home. In Moslem lands 
they have a curious medley of superstitious practices 
known as a "zar," which is supposed to relieve the 
demonized. The puerilities and cruelties of so-called 
Christians in former times need not be reviewed. 

V. In treating cases of demonism one is liable to 
be discouraged by difficulties. Jesus' disciples, too, 
found some cases more difficult to heal than others. Com- 
plications, psychic or physical, may occur. My No. 8 
seemed to have tuberculosis. With No. 17 one leg and 
one arm had been paralyzed for years. Nos. 85, 88 and 
others had asthmatic complications. Knowing, as we 
now do, that asthma is itself a psychic condition, we are 
not surprised that demonism should light it up. Com- 
plications often clear up with no specific treatment when 
the demonism is healed. 

Female cases seem more difficult than male. We 
have seen (Chap. IV) that the predisposition of females 
to demonism is due rather to the psychic than to the phy- 
sical feminine. But both psychic and physical conditions 
may complicate matters. The readiness with which 
males recover may be seen, e.g., in my No. 86. This 
man was troubled for years. He could neither walk nor 
eat. Friends brought him to church in a boat. Yet 
the next Sunday he walked in several miles. When I 



TREATMENT OF DEMONISM 1 37 

saw him a few weeks later, he was normal. Indeed I 
could cot pick him out in a crowd. So also Nos. 407, 
408, men, cleared up quickly and easily. But the case 
of No. 72, a bright, strong, young woman, was pro- 
tracted for several years. Nos. 4 and 5, both females, 
each took a year to recover. 

Cases of long duration seem to be relatively difficult. 
Thus No. 58, whose case has come down through three 
generations from mother-in-law to daughter-in-law, was 
under our treatment a year or more, while her neighbor, 
No. 68, also a woman, a case of only a few months, cleared 
up readily, and she was soon rejoicing in a baby — her 
first one. This is simply due to the fact that a belief, 
a conviction of three generations standing is harder to 
eradicate than one of three months. 

What I have called reflective cases are usually not 
so difficult. When No. 79, already afflicted, was mar- 
ried, her husband also became afflicted, aud later a child. 
The demon would speak out, now in one and now in 
another of the family, the demonism of the original case 
being reflected, as it were, in the other members of the 
family. The husband was easily healed, but the wife's 
case took several years. 

Circumstances of various kinds may hinder recovery. 
With Nos. 5, 77 and others, poverty prevented attend- 
ance on church in busy seasons and backsets occurred. 
A number of cases, 83, 122 and others, after making 
satisfactory progress, meeting family friction were 
angered, and anger is liable to light it up. 

When the primary personality of the patient, whether 
through fear and helplessness or through moral perversity, 
assumes a supine attitude, there is not much hope until 
that is overcome. A case of this kind is No. 105, reported 



I38 DEMONISM 

by Miss Waterman. The patient, when normal, showed j 
no desire to be healed and made no effort. 

The great difficulty with treating demonism to-day , 
is the prevalence and the tenacity of polytheism, and the 
hostility on racial grounds to Christianity. In Judea . 
monotheism was universal, and in spite of political 
opposition faith in Jesus was strong and growing. Some 
of our cases have been lost because ignorant friends 
took them back under idolatrous environment, i 

Perseverance and faith usually overcome even in 
difficult cases. No. 65 is a woman, and one who had 
been afflicted twenty-nine years. None of the family 
were Christians. When the affliction came on, it would 
feel like something pushing along up the face, shoving 
the mouth and nose upwards. There would be a sensa- 
tion as of hammering on the top of the head. Sometimes 
the distress would be so great that she would roll on the 
floor. In 1917 she was led to come to church. The 
Christians tried to teach her a prayer, but she could not 
remember it. The demon talked vociferously at the 
church. On December 9th, 1917, I was at Tienhu. I 
noticed in a room opposite several women. The Elder 
Ch'en came out of there, remarking: " Even here she 
is still talking strange talk," i.e., the demon talk. When 
she came before the session, I saw her to be a woman 
well-built and healthy-looking except that one eye was 
drawn up in a nervous tension and the head was nodding. 
The report indicated clearly a case of demonism, which 
she had failed thus far to overcome. I gave her a sen- 
tence prayer which she could remember. 

On May 18th, 1918, she walked six miles to church, 
coming in hot but not exhausted, to all appearances 
normal and reporting no trouble since the last interview. 



TREATMENT OF DEMONISM 1 39 

I! The next day she was baptized. Just afterwards, during 

a long congregational meeting, I noticed a commotion. 

She was having a spell. The face was drawn up, the 

eyes looked distraught, she twisted in distress. There 

was now no talking by the Satanic personality. A 

"dumb" demon does not signify necessarily that the 

patient is chronically dumb, though that may sometimes 

result from demonism, but that under the influence the 

patient cannot talk. So evident were the symptoms — 

' after we had been working on her nearly a year — that 

ij missionaries present, who had before been non-committal, 

i after the service frankly admitted conviction of the reality 

; of demonism. To prevent confusion at the time I called 

1 for Mr. Tai. He sat by her, holding her hand, and the 

j spell passed off. 

On June 23rd, 1918, I was again at Tienhu, and held 
. long services, but there was no further trouble nor has 
there been since that time. 

My observation is that cases which have gotten a 
real faith in Jesus have, as a rule, been healed. 

VI. In comparing these modern cases with those 
healed by Jesus, question may be raised as to the time 
element. His cases seem to have been healed immedi- 
ately ; ours sometimes take months or years. Does this 
indicate difference in the affection or in the treatment ? 
The facts show that the affection is the same, and as to 
the treatment the difference is relative not absolute. 

We do not know what is included in the record of 
New Testament cases. Workers report to me that on such 
and such a date a patient was healed. I find on investiga- 
tion what they mean is that the patient then grasped the 
faith, made the turning-point, passed the crisis, though 
it may have taken time for the convalescence to be com- 



140 DEMONISM 

pleted. It would be no discredit to the records to suppose 
that some of Jesus* cases had backsets. 

Our cases are sometimes healed immediate!}'. No. 
101, as reported by Dr. Woods, was healed in five 
minutes. No. 108, as reported by Miss King, after 
several ineffectual attempts, finally made a definite 
decision, burnt her idols, and. from that time was healed. 
Nos. 35, 37, 62, 68, 73, 113, 129, 148, 149, 150, 302, 407, 
408 and others are reported as immediate cures. 

The process with us, as with Jesus, is clearly a mat- 
ter of suggestion, but not having His divine power, with 
us an educative process is sometimes necessary before the 
suggestion can take effect. Indeed, Emanuel Geijerstam 
reports from the scientific standpoint that in many cases 
of hysteria and neurasthenia treated by him the hypnotic 
methods used only started the ameliorative process and 
complete restoration followed in the course of time.* 

The superior efficacy of Jesus' treatment is easily 
understood. (1) The psychic attitude of the community 
affects the situation. We note that in China where the 
church is strong and growing, where the sentiment of 
the community tends strongly towards the church, the 
demonized are more readily healed than elsewhere. 

(2) A given method in the hands of a master is 
pre-eminently effective. A demon which could resist the 
disciples dare not resist Jesus the Christ. 



*See Zeit f. Psychotherapie und Med. Psychologic, vol. 
VIII, Nos. 5 and 6. 



CHAPTER XI 
TREATMENT OF DEMONOMANIAS. 

As to the treatment of the insanities which resemble 
demonism, I make bold to put forward a broad proposi- 
tion. Others may have anticipated me, but if so, it has 
not come to my knowledge. 

In Chap. VI we reviewed some of the prominent 
theories as to diseases of psychic origin. My proposition 
is that under all of these systems a most powerful cura- 
tive factor is the leading of the mind into a healthy, 
normal religious life. 

Suppose we think with Dubois and would correct 
mental abnormalities by an educative process, leading men 
into right and normal attitudes of mind and of conduct. 
Indisputably one of the deepest human impulses, the 
most inexorable cravings is for something to satisfy 
the religious nature. Can we, then, expect the mentality 
to function properly, if we leave out this element or 
antagonize it ? 

Or let us adopt the libido terminology. Christians 
who incline to psychanalytic views need have no hesita- 
tion in recognizing this principle of the libido, the flow of 
biological energy manifested in desire. If God made 
man, implanting in him the fixed necessity of perpetuat- 
ing the species and providing for the transmission by 
heredity of physical and psychic qualities, then the libido 
also can just as readily be attributed to Divine origin. 
Deep in the heart of this libido, as all scientists admit, 
js the craving for God. Jung himself recognizes it as a 
biological necessity. Speaking of the religious-philoso- 
phical attitude he says*: "This attitude is itself an 



* *< 



Analytic Psychology," Chap, VII, 



142 DEMONISM 

achievement of civilization : it is a function that is ex- 
ceedingly valuable from a biological point of view, for it 
gives rise to the incentives that force human beings to 
do creative work for the benefit of a future age, and, if 
necessary, to sacrifice themselves for the welfare of the 
species." He and some other psychanalysts do not 
recognize religion as based on fact, but as a process of 
emotional sublimation.* But whatever view we take, 
we find ourselves confronted with the fact that religion 
is one of the most powerful factors of the libido. 

On the principles of these several schools, it is 
interference with the libido, obstruction of the libido, 
overstrain in adjustments for the libido, that cause 
trouble. Is it not the logical corollary that provision for 
the full, untrammeled flow of the libido along one of its 
favorite channels must make for normal conditions ? 
This religious life is not to be developed by mere enforce- 
ment of authority, by ecclesiasticism. The spirit of 
Jesus Christ must be implanted in the life, the spirit of 
love, and also of desire to do God's will. The craving 
for a God on whom to rely must find a solid resting place. 

Or take Prince's view of emotive impulse causing 
psychic conflict, and Sidis's view of nerve exhaustion 
from fear. Religion wrongly taught may lead to worry, 
to abnormal fear, to overanxiety, and thus to psycho- 
pathic conditions. But on the other hand, religion rightly 
understood is a guide io the emotions and a palliative 
for overwrought nerves. 

It has been said that sex and religion are the two 
greatest emotive impulses, both bearing on the perpetua- 
tion of life, or conversely expressed, both arising from 
fear of extinction. The satisfying of these two cravings 



% 



See Chap. VI. 



TREATMENT OF DEMONOMANIAS 143 

in normal, right ways goes far to satisfy, and thus to 
regulate the powerful emotions, and also to conserve the 
nerve force by relieving worry and fear. Man cannot 
get rid of the great unknown. Trouble, affliction, 
sorrow, death press in on us at every turn. Religion 
allays, relieves, comforts, strengthens. 

On one occasion President McKinley had been on a 
heavy mental strain. He had by force of will kept at it 
until midnight. As he lay down the work, McKinley 
broke out in an exclamation, * I could not stand this sort 
of thing if it were not for God to rely on.' This expresses 
the experience of the greatest men. 

Hence I claim that religion wisely presented is a 
psychopathic sedative and tonic. There are functional 
insanities in which it may relieve the conditions entirely. 
When permanent organic changes have taken place, 
religion may help, even where it cannot heal. 

Mrs. A. H. Smith reports No. 130. A meat ped- 
dler and his wife had lived amicably, so far as known. 
One day he came home arbitrary and unreasonable from 
drink. She talked back. He struck her. They fought 
and she went off into violent insanity, breaking windows, 
etc. It took three men to hold her. Her supply of milk 
dried up, and the baby had to go to others. Later the 
violence lessened but she continued insane. The husband 
could hardly keep any clothes on her. She could not 
sleep, reviled people. Finally she was sent to the mission 
hospital. 

Christian friends made it a subject for earnest prayer. 
The husband resisted their influence. But finally he 
made a confession of his sin in striking the woman and 
prayed. Both now had full religious life, and in a few 
days the woman went home sane. 



144 DEMONISM 

Another case given by Mrs. Smith, No. 142, seems 
to be incipient insanity, relieved by the mind going into 
a current of smooth religious life. This was a young 
man of Christian parentage. He had been well educated 
and looked forward to going to America. But he drifted 
away from religion. He began to do strange things. 
His head troubled him. The jangle of voices in the 
neighbor's yard worried him till he threw brickbats over 
the wall. He struck an invalid boy and an old woman. 
He would strike and revile children, would fly into a 
passion if a meal was late, break dishes, etc. A shelter 
was built for him outside the city wall and he took to 
herding goats. But he could still hear the church bell, 
and once ordered the keeper not to ring it, thus showing 
that conscience about religious matters was back of his 
trouble. One day in silent meditation, he seemed to 
have a change of heart. He wanted work. So he was 
set to writing and teaching. As he studied the Bible he 
became repentant, prayed, began to go to church. Con- 
fession to those he had struck and worried relieved him. 
At one time he omitted going to church and trouble 
began again ; he broke lamp chimneys, dishes, a mirror 
stand. Again under prayer of friends he revived. The 
writing out of his experiences for this book gave him an 
upward lift, and he is now recovered. 

Miss Mary Culler White gives a case of insanity* 
with physical conditions which was helped by religion 
and Christian treatment. She had noticed a wretched- 
looking woman, who was nagged about by hoodlums. 
When Miss White was one day telling non-Christian 
ladies about prayer, they challenged her with the 
question, " Why do you not pray for that woman?" 

* No. 138. 



TREATMENT OF DEMONOMANIAS 1 45 

She did. At that time she feared to take the woman in, 
lest she be criticized. In January 1919, she again felt 
moved to try Christianity on this case. Sending out, she 
found the woman's lair, for she lived like a beast. The 
next day the woman wandered near the mission while 
revival services were going on. Miss White took her in. 

The patient was 27 years old. She had been sold 
about from one man to another. Insanity came on after 
the birth and death of a child. An eye had been lost, 
as was said, through smallpox. She was in a horrible 
state, filthy, hair cut off, her naked body showing no 
appearance of her sex. She had a bad case of syphilis. 
She showed no alternations of personality but outbursts 
of temper. In her tantrums she would chant like the 
demonized. For a time she forgot her own name and 
the place where she had lived. There was bitter antago- 
nism to the name Jesus. The Chinese classified her as 
mentally afflicted rather than demonized. 

The missionaries placed chief reliance on Christianity. 
The day she was taken in, they gave her a bath, a place 
to sleep, and held special prayers over her. The next 
morning they noticed improvement already. After a 
time the woman ceased her antagonism and herself 
prayed to Jesus. In April the missionaries set a day, 
invited friends from other cities and spent the day in 
prayer for her. By 4 p.m. she was distinctly quieter 
and from that date a marked change was noticeable. 

For her physical condition they used drugs, with 
injections of soamin. By August the syphilitic symptoms 
had ceased and the drugs were stopped. But the mind 
was still not right and the treatment by Christian influ- 
ence was continued. After nineteen months in the 
mission she was quiet, sweet-tempered, spent her time 



146 DEMONISM 

spinning and making grass ropes— well, but a little 
simple-minded. (Illus. 15.) 

My No. 202 is a case of demonomania in America. 
How the patient was diagnosed and treated in the hos- 
pital I am not informed. He relates his experience as 
follows. He was brought up in a Christian home, but 
took to drink and became an infidel in religion. During 
a wild life he began to believe himself possessed of de- 
mons. He thought he saw Satan, thought people or 
demons were trying to poison him, were trying to squirt 
the poison on him or to bore holes in the floor and thus 
reach him. He was put in an asylum. After a time 
he perceived that the demons were deceiving him with 
falsehoods. He got a Bible and read it. He would 
silently argue with the demons. He would pray publicly 
all about the place, until he read about praying in your 
closet, and saw that in this also he had been misled of 
the Devil. For a time the thought was borne in on him 
that he was the Apostle Peter. In childhood the name 
bad been impressed on his memory by a boy making a 
joke of it. This he argued out, saying that Peter was 
holy but he was wicked, and thus it could not be. He 
also worked out the question about Millenial Dawnism. 
Finding a book of Cowper's he was helped by that. In 
time he was healed and now for some years has preached 
the Gospel. The struggles of this bewildered mind to 
right itself evidently found help by religious lines of 
thought. Granting that the hospital treatment, whatever 
it was, may have been suited to his needs, we can see 
how religion was an effective psychic influence. 

I put forth my proposition, in the hope that others 
more competent may take it up, and work it out scienti- 
fically. 




Illus. 15. Case 138. See p. 144, 




Illus. 16. The Skeleton 

Chii,d Headed. Case 

415. See pp. 5, 147. 




Illus. 17. The Wizard. 
Case 320. See pp. 17, 147. 




Illus. 18. Demon Haunts. 

Case 414 under 

control. 



CHAPTER XII 

PREVENTION 

The principles we have now worked out open up 
before us a vast field for social psychotherapeutics. A 
few of us have been in these demon haunts. We have 
seen cases like the " Skeleton Child, "* al! wasted away 
with what appeared to be disease, brought back to life 
and health by getting rid of the demon. We know that 
the multitudes are in psychic slavery to the wizards and 
witches, and that they themselves are in bondage. My 
No. 1 20 was widely known as "The Wizard/ ' Years ago 
he had suddenly gone to bed, desperately ill and talking 
idiot-like. For ten years he was compelled to practice 
wizardry, himself, his wife and son all suffering with 
periodic attacks of demonism. But Jesus healed them 
and made him a herald of freedom. 

There are millions afflicted by, and billions in dread 
of this curse. And all could be averted. The world 
could be freed from this bondage. 

The great heart of mankind will respond to this need 
when it is appreciated. 

To a fire, to a famine, to a war, we rush with relief, 
regardless of cost; we organize museums and societies for 
scientific research ; we endow universities and hospitals 
for the relief of human ignorance and human ills. We 
who have been delivered from the thralldom of medi- 
evalism need only to see this curse under which two-thirds 
of the human race are in bondage. We cannot go by on 
the other side and leave them to some Samaritan's care. 

I. In order to this relief, the first consideration is 
that the thinking world should understand the subject. 

*No. 415. 



148 DEMONISM 

Others, it is to be hoped, will follow up the lead I have 
here given. Iyight is needed on many points and it 
will take further testimony to convince an incredulous 
world of the facts. A subject of such proportions would 
justify the lifelong study of competent men. Explora- 
tory expeditions would be worth while, but unless wisely 
directed their data would be worthless. True demonism 
is elusive. In a very shoal of demons, investigators would 
catch none unless they knew how. Special departments 
for the study of this branch of psychiatry are a distinct 
desideratum. Especially should there be provision for 
the receiving and publishing of facts on this subject. 

II. To get rid of demonism the one essential is to 
free mankind from the belief that spiritualities can and 
do "possess" men ad libitum. How shall we go about 
this ? The answer comes trippingly on somebody's 
tongue, Teach that there are no spiritualities. But note, 
to do this we must face : (1) The belief of the Christian 
world on grounds of faith that there are spiritualities. 

(2) The proofs now being put forward on scientific 
grounds to the persistence of the personality after death. 

(3) The proofs we ourselves have seen herein. (4) 
The incontrovertible fact that no civilization has yet been 
established on the no - spirituality basis, a fact which 
shows that belief in spiritualities is part of our being. 
The psychanalysts admit this fact and attempt to account 
for it as a biological product, as sublimation of the libido. 
But that there are no spiritualities, that nature, the 
libido, God, would infix in us an indestructible belief in 
a lie, even for worthy, utilitarian purposes, is a hypothe- 
sis which is incapable of demonstration and inacceptable 
to the mind of humanity. We cannot believe that there 
would be appetite were there no food, thirst were there 



PREVENTION 149 

no drink, sexual desire were there no sex, avarice were 
there no money, fellow feeling were there no fellows. 
Longing for a fictitious God is a theory unworthy of the 
science of biology. 

What can be done, what must be done is to get rid 
of the false superstitious ideas as to what spiritualities 
there are. The fox demons and weasel demons and 
pig demons must follow the ghosts and wraiths and 
banshees into oblivion. Tales of the weird must be 
brought to the bar of exact truth. The ancient worship 
of bulls and cats, of he-goats,* of the seminal principle, 
of Jupiter and Mercury, and all the rest of them has 
long since given way to recognition of God, a worship 
satisfying to the strongest minds of the race. 

Furthermore, the powers and limitations of spiritu- 
alities must be defined, We must bring the spirit world 
under the reign of law. Men must be taught that, 
granting the continued existence after death of a father- 
in-law or an enemy, he has no power to "possess" a 
poor girl of his own volition. 

If spirits, without regard to law or to God, the 
author of law, had the power to communicate with men 
at will, our departed friends would habitually meet us 
around the fireside. That they do not is itself proof 
that there is restriction, that law regulates their course. 
That God may let down the bars for a Samuel is easily 
conceivable. That there are laws unknown to us which 
would in some cases temporarily loose the restrictions, 
it is not possible to deny without proof. If so, we 
could understand some of those phenomena observed 
by the Societies for Psychic Research. But we can 
absolutely deny that spirits are free from law. 

*Ex. 17 :7. 



I50 DEMONISM 

The hypothesis that Satan has the power to send 
departed spirits to earth seems hardly credible. We saw 
in Chapter IX that probably he can utilize evil spiritu- 
alities, non-human, both to tempt men to sin and also 
to cause dissociation in those weakened by fear. But 
spirits of the wicked dead are, of course, subject to 
restrictions, as others are. 

Recognition of the reign of law in the spiritual 
world will do away with demonism. It will disabuse 
the idea that ghosts walk the earth ad libitum^ and also 
that Satan can " possess' ' whom he will. Remove the 
fear of being demonized, and we remove demonism. 
Men can be hypnotized, but we do not live in fear of 
it. The belief that demons can " possess," regardless 
of the attitude of mind of the subject, leads to fear, and 
the fear induces the attitude of "expectant attention, M 
the very thing which renders men liable to demonization. 
Knowledge will relieve fear. 

Above all, the worship of the dead, of saints and 
demons, of imaginary spirits, all forms of polytheism, 
must be given up. Sentimental attempts to whitewash 
medievalism are criminal. The " Light of Asia" is the 
blackness of Inferno. As well eulogize indiscriminate 
venesection, such as hastened the death of Washington, 
or put the science of medicine back in the hands of the 
barbers. The chirurgeons were, doubtless, well meaning 
men, but many a death must be laid to their door. 

Here let me give a most serious and friendly warn- 
ing. The Societies for Psychic Research maintain the 
continued existence of personalities after death and the 
possibility of their taking control of living men. As a 
matter of scientific study, the importance of their investi- 
gations can hardly be overestimated. But we should 



PREVENTION 151 

I; 

j note that they are working with poisons — as science 

I has to do. The use of these poisons is entirely another 

! matter. Some attempt to utilize these spirits. Hence 

j arises Spiritualism— which many confuse with the 

! scientific work of the Societies. Appeal to spirits, 

whether their existence be proven or not, is of the 

nature of worship. It is just what the Chinese do when 

they pray to a man named Kwan, canonized as the God 

of War, or to a man named Chang, canonized as the 

Jade Emperor. It is the seeking after those '* that peep 

and that mutter."* This is the curse which God taught 

the Jews of old to fight. If such practices spread, 

demouism will result. 

Rev. Canon Williams states that two English ladies, 
coming under the influence of New Zealand Spiritu- 
alism, became demonized. 

As this chapter goes to press, I see in "The 
Healer, " London, July 1921, a case of demouism in 
New England, reported by a Catholic priest. It bears 
all the marks of genuineness. The patient is a woman 
of fifty years. At the first word of exorcism — doubtless 
the name " Jesus'' was used — she was seized with 
convulsive shivering. In the exorcism there were numer- 
ous ejections. There was speech in different languages, 
which the priest took to be medieval Italian and 
Hindustani. With each ejection the face would be 
twisted into a li devilish' ' appearance; there would be 
heavings and chokiugs. There were periods of rigidity. 
This woman formerly had had no trouble and did not 
believe in spirits other than God. But one summer she 
rented her cottage on the seacoast to spiritualists for a 

* Is. 8:19. 



I52 DEMONISM 

"camp meeting." When she came back into the house, 
trouble began. 

Now, whether it was due to spirits invoked or to 
auto-suggestion, after she had heard of what had been 
done, in any case it must be attributed to the practices 
of the spiritualists. L,et science aud religion beware. 
Demonism will come in Christian lands, if the practice 
of appealing to spirits becomes common. 

III. In this matter of demonism governments beat 
heavy responsibility. To what extent are they to exert 
civil power for the removal of degrading moral and 
religious conditions? Here we touch the delicate line 
between religious freedom and civic betterment. Modern 
civilization is based on the policy of religious freedom and 
non-interference by the government in church matters. 
Yet no one would question that it was the duty of the 
British Government to abolish the suttee and the Jug- 
gernaut in India. Considerations of personal liberty 
cannot excuse robbery and murder. Malpractice is 
murder. It is so construed under enlightened govern- 
ments. 

Cases have come before the Western courts of death 
resulting because a father or mother, with erroneous 
views about faith healing, has refused to call in the phy- 
sician. Can the courts remit responsibility in such ca^es 
because of religious errors ? 

How can governments deal with demonism ? 
Sympathetic support can be given to healthy religious 
and moral education. As to superstitious practices, at 
least official sanction should be withheld. Government 
officials who encourage and participate in idolatrous pro- 
cessions and worship of idols on feast days, who consult 
uecromancers as to dates, who raise funds for the building 



PREVENTION 153 

of temples, are thereby bringing misery on many of their 
people. Aud indeed, it is the duty of a government 
to suppress idolatry and witchcraft. We should outlaw 
malpractice in religiou just as in medicine. The old 
Jewish law of capital punishment for witchcraft, when 
misinterpreted and misapplied, has wrought injustice and 
misery. Yet the intent of it was, not to give credence 
to witchcraft, but to stop those who were corrupting the 
nation with superstitious practices. Had not the Jews 
put away witchcraft and idolatry, the probability is that 
we should still be on a par with China as to superstition, 
demonism, and degraded religious practices. We owe 
more to that old drastic legislation than we appreciate. 
In this day we do not stone criminals nor crucify them, 
yet law must be enforced. An enemy who should spread 
the germs of tetanus or tuberculosis would find short 
shrift when caught. America now prohibits alcohol 
because it degrades mentally and physically. By the 
same tokens witchcraft, fortune-telling, idolatry, which 
cause this form of insanity, should be forbidden. 

IV. In this social therapeutics education is an 
important factor. Unwise or ignorant theologians, who 
do not comprehend this fact, may obstruct progress. It 
was a church which killed the Christ because He was 
enlightening them. It was a church which forced 
Galileo to recant the Copernican views and with texts of 
Scripture fought down Columbus in the Spanish Junta. 
Science is not an enemy of true religion but an ally. 

Psychiatrists, students of abnormal psychology, have 
opened up a wider field than they knew. Psychic 
abnormalities in Western lands are those of the indivi- 
dual, the result, it may be, of peculiar nervous and mental 
conditions, of family environment, of heredity, of organic 



154 DEMONISM 

or functional defects, and what not. Demonism is psy- 
chopathology en masse, Here psychotherapeutics must 
be on a large scale. In this work students, journalists, 
authors must take the lead. And the progress of 
civilization is an unconscious social remedy. Ships and 
railroads, commercial and diplomatic intercourse, athlet- 
ics and travel are all demonicides. 

V. But in the long run, true religion must be the 
final remedy. As I have said, human history shows no 
case of a civilization without a religion. Experiments 
along this line, as, e.g., in the French Revolution, proved 
chimerical. Renan admitted that there could be no 
civilization without a religion. 

From a scientific as well as a historical point of view, 
we may see that religion is necessary to relieve demonism. 
Nature abhors a psychic vacuum. Demonism originates 
in suggestion, and suggestion must be used to cure it. 
This is the Divine remedy. This is Jesus Christ's 
panacea for demonism, which has proved so effective. 
Faith in him will cleanse China and Japan and India and 
Africa and New Zealand and the Moslem lands of 
demonism. 

The thinkers of China do not believe in demons. Any 
cultured Chinese will quote you the well-known couplet : 
" If you believe in the gods, they are ; if you believe not, 
they are not. ,, The literati resisted the introduction of 
Indian Buddhism and still theoretically oppose it. Yet 
the land is full of idols, and they themselves worship 
them. Negations cannot nullify misreligion. Confu- 
cianism had nothing positive to offer. There is need of 
something to give contra-suggestion and thus drive out 
the fear of demons. There is in the human make-up a 
psychic necessity for religion — for a religion strong 



PREVENTION 1 55 

enough to make men die for it, yet free and intelligent. 
The impulses of the human mind, given direction towards 
higher ideals, towards wisdom, towards love, reach out 
and lay hold on God. Failing this, men's minds grow 
up in morasses of ignorance, superstition, evil. The 
enlightened form of Christianity provides the sociological 
corrective of demonism. 



- 



INDEX. 



Aboulia 


4, 135 


Breuer and Freud 


43, 48 


Adler ... 


65, 68 


Bryars, Mrs. J. 


2 


Africa 


7, 59, 60, 92 


Buddhism 


92, 154 


Alcoholism ... 


40 


Butterfield, C. h. 


2 


Allison, A. ... 


2 






Alma, Z. 


32 


Cable, A. Mildred 


... 2, 7, 118 


Altruism 


85 


Calvin 


... 86 


America 


...42, 59, 153 


Catatonic 


20 


Ames 


... 42 


Catholic 


35, 151 


Amnesia 


13, 2 5 


Cause .. 


... 43, 83, 87 


Anderson, Paul V 15 


Chamberlain 


59 


Anesthesia ... 


23, 47 


Charcot 


42; 76 


Anger 


137 


China 8, 31, 43, 


52, 59, 67, 71, 


Animals 


iu6 


92 


, 10?, 153, 154 


Animism 


n 


Christ 


8, 70, 91, 153 


Asthma 


42, 136 


Christian 18, 28, 


39, 61, 81, 89, 


Auto-hypnotization 82, 103, 106 


95, 105, no, 118 


132, 134, 135 


Automatic 


... 28, 83, 95 


Christianity 9, 


14, 16, 50, 56, 


Automatism ... 


25, 26> 28, 8r 


58, 63, 69, 73 


, 121, 145, 154 


Azam 


32 


Cigarette 


22 






Cock 


99 


Babinski 


42 


Cocouscious . 


82, 97 


Baby ... 35, 39, 


45, 96, 108, 137 


Columbus 


... 153 


Baldwin 


12 


Comerford, Mrs. W. K. ... 120 


Banister, Wm. 


7 


Conflict 


19, 66, 68, 73 


Baptize 


138 


Confucianism 


154 


Barker, Iyewelly 


s F. 


Constans, M... 


129 




30, 40, 132, 133 


Convulsions 9, 47, 48, 60, 89, 


Barrows, Ira... 


90 




108, 151 


" B. C. A." ... 


34 


Cough 


96 


Beauchamp ... 


22, 32 


Crookes, Wm. 


88 


Beelzebub 


7o 


Cuckoo 


10 


Bell, L. N. ... 


2, 73 






Bell, Mrs. h. N. 


2 


Dana 


31 


Berkin, J. 


2 


Dailey, A. H. 


* 32 


Bible i, 11, 39, 


69, 80, 101, 117, 


Darwinianism 


85 




144, 146 


Daughter-in-law.. 


.14,35,46, 62, 


Biology 


53, 149 




67, 103, 137 


Blanche, W. ... 


34 


Dead, The ... 


10, 121 


Blind ... 


42, 49 


Death 


14 


Boerhaave 


105 


Deaf 


97 


Borderland cases ... ... 18 


De Korne 


24 


Bourne, Ansel 


33, 96 


Delirium 


5, 12 


Braid 


75, 106 


Dement 


... 14 


Brain 


23, 47 65, 84 


Demonomania 


... 1, 19, 146 


Bravery 


••• «•• 3^ 


Depressive ... 


13, 20 



11 



INDEX 



Determinism 86 

Devil 20, 113, 115, 120 

Dialect 24, 25, 44 

Diet. Phil, and Psych. .. 12 
Diet. Psych. Medicine ... 58 

Diefendorf * 13 

Digitalis .. 39 

Disease 10, II, 23, 40, 44, 47, 84, 

89 
Dissociation 21, 23, 24, 31, 33, 
36, 40, 48, 76, 92, 94, 108 
Dissociation of Personality, 

The 22 

Dittus, Gottleibin ... 59, 78, 89 
Dog ... ». ..- 107 

Dubois, Paul 33, 41,42,64,67, 

141 

Dumb... 139 

Dunton, Wm. ... ... 47 

Eat 25, 39, 130 

KHjah 121 

Emotion 18, 51, 66, 79, *43 

Encyc. Brit 60, 71 

English 7, 24, n8 

Environment 14, 31, 83, 89, 97, 

102 

Epilepsy 5, 9, 12, 17, 20, 47, 57, 

96, no 

Epileptoid 7, J 7 

Erotic 6 7 

Eructation I 5* 25 

Ether - 52 

Etiology 4i, 47, 5* 

Europe 43 

Evil 33 ffg» 8 3, 87, 88, 97, 99 

Evolution 53, 85 

Excitatory 4*, 5 2 

Exorcism ... 11, 19, x 35, J 57 
Eye 49%- 

Faith 48, 138, 148, 152 

Family ... 46, 137. Cf. 134 

Fancher, Mollie ... .. 3 2 

Fear 43, 66, 68, 79, 97, 99, I02 , 

Cf. 30, 117, 142 

FelidaX 32 

Female ... 43, 45, 13°, I3 6 
Ferry woman 34 



Fibre 

Fire-demon ... 
Fischer, Doris 
Foatning 
Forel ... 



23, 47 

... 35 

... 32 

9, 48, 60 

16, 96 



Fox ..,10, 27, 28, 59, 61, 78, 83 

Franke, EHsabet 60 

Freedom 86 

French ... ... ... 23 

Freud 53, 65, 67 

Friction 64, 137 

Gadara ... 8 

Galileo 153 

Garland, Miss S. J.. ..2, 101, 128 
Geijerstam, Emanuel ... 140 
Germany ... 7, 59, 98, 102 

Ghosts 10, 123,149 

Gifford, R. Swain 122 

Giles ,. ... 71 

Glanville, S 2 

God, 20, 32, 54, 73, 86, 94, 115, 

141, 148, 155 

Goforth, Jonathan ... 2, 98 

Goforth, Mrs. J 2 

Gonorrhea 52 

Goodhart 25 

Governments ,.. ... 153 

Graham, J. R, 2 

Graham, Mrs. J. R. 2, 48, 73 

Greek 3, 20, 57 

Guardian ... ... ... 36 

Gurney, Edmund 88 



Hall, Jas. K.... 


16 


Hanna 


...25, 41, 128 


Hart 


21 


Harvard 


3i 


Hatred 


28, 102 


Headache 


... 11, 19, 26 


Healer, The ... 


151 


Heredity 


13, 46 


Hewett, J. W. 


... 30, 5o, 96 



Hickson, James Moore ... 92 
History ... ... ... 72 

Home, D.D 88 

Houston, Janet Hay 2, 7, 56 

Hudson, W. H 2, 98 

Hudson, Thompson J. ... 106 



INDEX 



111 



Husband ... 14, 44? i°3> T 37 
Hyperesthesia ... 23, 26, 81 

Hypnoidization 129 

Hypnotize, 23, 47, 75, 78, 82, 95, 

99, 129, 132 

Hyslop, J. H. ... 32, 121 

Idiocy 17, 19 

Idol, etc., 26, 46, 61, 77, 105, 

I33» 153, 154 
Ignatius . ... ... 57 

Incense 5, 28, 44, 46, 61, 62 

India, 7, 26, 59, 92, 99, 102, 154 
Indigestion ... ... 39, 43 

Inflammation ... ... 49 

Inhibitory ... ...36, 38, 102 

Insane, etc. II, 12 fig, 21, 73, 
91, 92, 100, 141 



Insomnia 


13, 22, 


68, 108 


Iris 


••• 


... 49 


Ivenes... 


... 


90, 116 


James, Wm. ... 


... 


... 33 


James I 


... 


... 59 


Janet, J. 


-.32, 


34, 129 


Janet, P. 26, 31, 


32, 33. 


42, 129 


; Japan ... 


7> ic 


>, 59, 92 



Jekyll ... 37 

Jesus 11, 16, 20, 26, 29, 33, 57, 
go, 91, 92, 97, 99, 100, 107, 
132, 133, 134, 138, 139, T 4°, 
144, 151, 154. 

Jew 10, 69, 151, 153 

Joan of Arc 88 

John 57 

Johnston, Mary ... 2, 51 

Josepbus ... ... 58, 70 

Journal of Abn. Psyeb. ... 22 

Jung ... 53, 65, 67, 90, 141 

Junkin, W. F. ... ... 2 

King, Margaret 2, 5, 63, 89, 97, 

131 
Kircher 106 

Korea ... 7, 59, 92, 102, 117 



Legion 
Leonie 



127 

116 



Levitation 118, Cf. 7 

Libido ... 53, 65, 141, 148 

Lodge, Oliver 86 

Lotus Bud 119, 121 

MacNaugbton, Florence M. 

2, 26, 92, 98 
Magdalene ... ... ... 127 

Male 45 

Malice ... ... 35, 88 

Malignity ... ... 3, 28, 96 

Malpractice ... ... ... 152 

Mandarin ... ... ... 24 

Mangold, Ernst 106 

Manic-depressive 

12, 13, 15, 19, 69 

Marcelline 32^ 34 

Marriage ... 44,46, 48, 137 
Maryland Hosp. for Insane, 31 
Mason, H. J.... ... ... 2 

Mason, Mrs. H.J 107 

Mason, Osgood 32 

Mather, Cotton 58 

McKinley 143 

Medicine ... ... 39, 132 

Medium ... 6, 37, 42, 91 

Melancholia... ... 13,20 

Memory ... ... 13, 22 

Menstrual ... ... ... 43 

Mental 41, 50 

Mesmer ... ... ... 75 

Mexico ... ... 7, 57 

Meyer, Adolf 19, 40, 46, 84 

Meyer, Solomon ... 24, 51 

Miller, John 36 

Mind ... 39 

Mitcbell, Weir 32 

Mitral... ... ... ... 39 

Moffett, L. I. ... 2, 104 

Mohammedan ... 60, 92, 99 

Monotheism... ... 56, 138 

Moral 33, 36 

Morgan, L. S. ... 2, 39 

Morzinnes ... 58, 76, 126, 129 
Moses ... ... ... 121 

Moses, Wm. Stainton ... 88 

Moslem 7, 59, 60 

Mouse 45 

Multiple 127, 131 



IV 



INDEX 



Miiusterberg 86 

Myers, F. W. H. ... 8i, 88, 106 

Nancy 42, 76 

Necessity ... ... ... 86 

Needles ... ... 49, 71 

Negroes 59 

Nerve 23, 40, 50, 52, 65, 66 

Neurasthenia ... .., 22 

Neuropathic 40 

Nevius, J. L. ... 2, 7, 24, 92 

New York ... ... ... 52 

New Zealand 6, 24, 61, 92, 11S, 

151 
Nickles, Florence 2 



Occult 

Old Stump ... 

Opium 

Optic... 

Orientation ... 

Owen, J. W. 



... 81 
... 90 
18, 40, 52 
... 50 
... 25 
2 



Painting 
Paralysis 
Paranoia 
Pathological 



122 

... 42, 63, 135 
... 12, 17, 20 
4, 10, 52, 65, 

95, 97 

Patterson, B. C 2, 35 

Paul 57 

Paxton, Mrs. J. W. 2, 8, 77, 97 

Periodicity 15 

Personality... 12, 21, 24, 115, 
121, 127, 148 

Peterson 16 

Phlegm ... 29 

Physical 23, 29, 39, 41, 44, 45, 

84, 136 

Pig 11 

Polytheism ... 57, 63, 138, 150 

Possession 10, 148 

Prayer 39, 44, 90, 96, 98, 138, 

144 

Precox 12, 20, 30 

Prince, Morton 22, 23, 31, 33, 
37, 4o, 41,42,48, 66, 74, 78, 
82, 127, 128, 129, 141 

Prince, Walter F 32 

Profligate 34 



Psychanalysis ...64, 142, 148 

Psychic 23, 39, 41, 44, 52, 64, 

84, J 53 
Psychiatry 12, 30, 42, 74, 148, 

153 
Psychopathic 40, 48, 143, 154 

Puberty 27 

Pulse ... 9, 133 

Purge 46, 108 

Purple 48 

Psychotherapeutics , 147, 154 

Realist, The 22 

Regression 65 

Religion 11, 18, 20, 53, 55, 84, 

141, 154 

Renan 154 

Retraction ... 23 

Reynolds, James 51 

Reynolds, Mary ... 32, 95 
Russia 47 

Saint, The 22 

Sally 22, 33, 37, 82, 116 

Samuel 121, 149 

Santonin I, 19 

Satan II, 55, 58, 80, 82, 89, 94, 

97, 99, ill, 112 ffg, 146, 150 

Saul 70 

Schizophrenia ... ... 19 

Science 1, 3, 11, 21, 23, 33, 54, 

75, 80, 94, 128, 148, 150, 154 

Scriptures 10, 24, 112 

Self-sacrifice 85 

Sex ... ... 41, 45, 142, 149 

Sexual ... 40, 52, 64, 91 

Shepherd and Enoch Pratt 

Hospital .. 13 

Sidis, Boris 12, 25, 36/41, 42, 

46, 66, 68, 74, 78, 96, 109, 

128, 135, 142 
Skeleton Child ... 5, 147 

Smith, C. H 17 

Smith, Mrs. A. H. 2,8, 143, 144 

Social 95, 147 

Soc. for Psych. Research 8o, 

121, 149, 150 

Solomon 58, 70 

Somnambulism 26 



INDEX 



South Seas 59 

Spiritualism 151 

Spiritualities ... 80, 94, 148 

Spirits 10, 11, 33, 88, 113 ffg 

Spratling ,.. 47 

Stegar, Clara B 2 

Stoddart 41 

Subconscious 31, 80, 102, 128, 

134 
Sublimation ... 53, 142 

Suggestibility 96 

Suggestion 16,42, 74, 77, 95, 

in, 114, 129, 135, 140, 154 

Superstition 26, 47, 53, 54, 64, 

78,80 

Swedeuborg 88 

Swine ... ... ... 107 

Sykes, Mrs. A 104 

Symptoms 27 

Syphilis 145 

Taoism 74, 108 

Taylor, J. H 2 

Taylor, Mrs. J. H. ... 2, 7 

Telepathy 81 

Testament 9, 20, 55, 58, 60, 106, 

H3) U9 

Tetanus 5, 135 

Thompson, Anna Y. ... 60 
Thompson, Frederick L,. 121 

Thyroidism 40 

Townsend, James B. ... 122 

Trance 6, 37 

Transfer ... 103, 1 10, 116 

Tremens 12 

Tremor ... .. 26, 44 

Tso chiien 71 

Tubercular 69 

Tuckey, C. L,loyd 51 



Twoey 

Tylor... 

Typhoid 

Unconscious 

Urinate 

Uterus 

Volitional ., 
Vomit 
Virgin cases 



32, 34, 37, u6 
71 

43, 60 

... 9, 48, 66 

45 

... 44 

... 82,95, in 

46, 108 

76 



Wade, J. Percy 31 

Watchman Magazine ... 117 
Waterman, Miss M. E. 34, 137 
Weasel ... 10, 35, 61, HO 

Westbrook 16 

Weston, Frank ... ... 61 

Wheelbarrow 5, 19 

White, Mary Culler 2, 144 

White, Wm. A ^3 

Will 87 

Williams, Arthur F. 2, 6, II, 

61, 92, 104, 107, 131 

Wilson, J. Leighton ... 60 

Witch 5, 17, 25, 58, 67, 76, 

i33> 153 
Wizard 17, 62, 147 

Woods, James B. 2, 4, 27, 52, 

97, 134 
Worth, Geo. C. ... 2, 104 



Yangchow . 
Yawning 
Yencheng . 

Zar ... 

Zoanthropia 

Zwemer 



89 

24, 28, 36, 60, 96 
... 7, 29, 52 

60 

I 

••• ••• 00 



VI 



INDEX 



Cases Cited* 



No. 
I 
2 
3 

4 
5 
6 

7 

8 

17 

25 

26 

29 
33 
35 
37 

38 

58 

62 
65 
67 
68 

71 

72 

73 

75 
77 
78 

79 

80 

81 

83 
85 
86 
88 
93 
97 
99 

101 

10 

103 

105 
108 
109 
in 

113 
118 
120 
122 



Page. 

18, 52, 135 

3, 61, IOI, 135 
33,44,62,103 

137 

. 44, 137 

130 

130 

69, 136 

136 

62, 103 

■ 33 

„. 26 

135 

140 

140 

50 

.. 27, 44. 62, 68, 83, 96, 
98, 100, no, 127, 136, 137 

, .. ... 140 

137 

46, 6l 

137, 140 

43 

44, 45, no, 137 

61, 136, 140 

104 

137 

17 

51, 102, 136, 137 

. 102, 136 

102, 136 

ni 

136 

136 

136 

68 

62 

... 26 

s, 97, 140 

... 39 

... 39 

34, 137 

5 62, 135, 140 

63y 97, 100, 135 

8 

34 

137 



::: 4 , £, 
::: ::: 



No. 

124 
129 
130 

134 

141 

147 
148 

149 
150 
151 
152 
153 
159 
167 
168 

i/4 
202 
302 

305 
316 
320 
3^3 
324 
325 
327 
345 
346 
347 
348 
349 
358 

364 
386 

387 
405 
406 
407 
408 
410 
411 
415 
417 
418 

434 

4* 
440 

459 
476 



Page. 

...8l, 104, 131 

140 

143 

48 

77 

" 104 

127, 131, 140 
6,-24, 118, 127, 140 

140 

107 

7 

i*7 

98 

120 

101 

120 

146 

140 

52 

8 

17 

... 14, 35, 109 

14, 35, 109 

... 14, 35, 109 
25 

10& 

108 

108 

49 

50 

119 

45 

68 

9, 48 

96 

67 

9, 137, 140 

131, 137, 140 

108 

109 

5, 147 

76 

76 

24 

15, 132, 134 

48 

119 

133 




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